In computer science, a jump search or block search refers to a search algorithm for ordered lists. It works by first checking all items Lkm, where {\displaystyle k\in \mathbb {N} } k\in \mathbb {N} and m is the block size, until an item is found that is larger than the search key. To find the exact position of the search key in the list a linear search is performed on the sublist L[(k-1)m, km].

The optimal value of m is √n, where n is the length of the list L. Because both steps of the algorithm look at, at most, √n items the algorithm runs in O(√n) time. This is better than a linear search, but worse than a binary search. The advantage over the latter is that a jump search only needs to jump backwards once, while a binary can jump backwards up to log n times. This can be important if a jumping backwards takes significantly more time than jumping forward.

[ROT13-image]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/ROT13_table_with_example.svg "ROT13"

[QuickSelect-image]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Selecting_quickselect_frames.gif "Quick Select"