How to perform a binary search on IList<T>?

I doubt there is a general purpose binary search method in .NET like that, except for the one being present in some base classes (but apparently not in the interfaces), so here's my general purpose one.

public static Int32 BinarySearchIndexOf<T>(this IList<T> list, T value, IComparer<T> comparer = null)
{
    if (list == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(list));

    comparer = comparer ?? Comparer<T>.Default;

    Int32 lower = 0;
    Int32 upper = list.Count - 1;

    while (lower <= upper)
    {
        Int32 middle = lower + (upper - lower) / 2;
        Int32 comparisonResult = comparer.Compare(value, list[middle]);
        if (comparisonResult == 0)
            return middle;
        else if (comparisonResult < 0)
            upper = middle - 1;
        else
            lower = middle + 1;
    }

    return ~lower;
}

This of course assumes that the list in question is already sorted, according to the same rules that the comparer will use.

Here's my version of Lasse's code. I find it useful to be able to use a lambda expression to perform the search. When searching in a list of objects, it permits to pass only the key that was used to sort. Implementations that use IComparer are trivially derived from this one.

I also like to return ~lower when no match is found. Array.BinarySearch does it and it allows you to know where the item you searched for should be inserted in order to keep the ordering.

/// <summary>
/// Performs a binary search on the specified collection.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of the item.</typeparam>
/// <typeparam name="TSearch">The type of the searched item.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list to be searched.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value to search for.</param>
/// <param name="comparer">The comparer that is used to compare the value
/// with the list items.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static int BinarySearch<TItem, TSearch>(this IList<TItem> list,
    TSearch value, Func<TSearch, TItem, int> comparer)
{
    if (list == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("list");
    }
    if (comparer == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("comparer");
    }

    int lower = 0;
    int upper = list.Count - 1;

    while (lower <= upper)
    {
        int middle = lower + (upper - lower) / 2;
        int comparisonResult = comparer(value, list[middle]);
        if (comparisonResult < 0)
        {
            upper = middle - 1;
        }
        else if (comparisonResult > 0)
        {
            lower = middle + 1;
        }
        else
        {
            return middle;
        }
    }

    return ~lower;
}

/// <summary>
/// Performs a binary search on the specified collection.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of the item.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list to be searched.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value to search for.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static int BinarySearch<TItem>(this IList<TItem> list, TItem value)
{
    return BinarySearch(list, value, Comparer<TItem>.Default);
}

/// <summary>
/// Performs a binary search on the specified collection.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of the item.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list to be searched.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value to search for.</param>
/// <param name="comparer">The comparer that is used to compare the value
/// with the list items.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static int BinarySearch<TItem>(this IList<TItem> list, TItem value,
    IComparer<TItem> comparer)
{
    return list.BinarySearch(value, comparer.Compare);
}

I like the solution with the extension method. However, a bit of warning is in order.

This is effectively Jon Bentley's implementation from his book Programming Pearls and it suffers modestly from a bug with numeric overflow that went undiscovered for 20 years or so. The (upper+lower) can overflow Int32 if you have a large number of items in the IList. A resolution to this is to do the middle calculation a bit differently using a subtraction instead; Middle = Lower + (Upper - Lower) / 2;

Bentley also warned in Programming Pearls that while the binary search algorithm was published in 1946 and the first correct implementation wasn't published until 1962.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search#Numerical_difficulties