How is the efficiency of searching for an element by value in an ArrayList evaluated?

In ArrayList, searching for an element by value is usually implemented using the contains() or indexOf() methods, which iterate through the elements from start to end, comparing each with the target value. The efficiency of such a search is O(n), where n is the number of elements in the list, since ArrayList does not index elements by value.

Example:

ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
list.add("apple");
list.add("banana");
boolean found = list.contains("banana"); // iterates through elements

If a faster search by value is required, it is better to use data structures with hashing, such as HashSet or HashMap.