title: Function of return -1
body: <p>Basically what does this return -1 do ?</p>
  
  <p>for an example :</p>
  
  <pre><code>int linear[] = {4, 21, 36, 14, 66, 91, 8, 22, 7, 81, 77, 10};
  int key = 77;
  for (int i = 0; i &lt; linear.length; i++){
    if (linear[i] &gt; key)
      return -1; //here
    else if (linear[i] == key)
      return i;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>i understand return 1 and return 0 well . but return -1 ?</p></li>
  <li><p>what if the question sounds like this :</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Show the way of solving the linear search based on the code given ?</p>