One of the examples is Collections.binarySearch
:
public static <T> int binarySearch(List<? extends Comparable<? super T>> list, T key) {
if (list instanceof RandomAccess || list.size()<BINARYSEARCH_THRESHOLD)
return Collections.indexedBinarySearch(list, key);
else
return Collections.iteratorBinarySearch(list, key);
}
Here different binary search algorithm implementations are used for random access and sequential access lists. Code is an implementation detail, but it's reasonable to differentiate lists here.
As specified in documenation for Collections.binarySearch:
This method runs in log(n) time for a "random access" list (which provides near-constant-time positional access). If the specified list does not implement the RandomAccess interface and is large, this method will do an iterator-based binary search that performs O(n) link traversals and O(log n) element comparisons.