[hardikkaurani]

• I have read CONTRIBUTING.md.
• This pull request is all my own work -- I have not plagiarized it.
• All filenames are in PascalCase.
• All functions and variable names follow Java naming conventions.
• All new algorithms have a URL in their comments that points to Wikipedia or other similar explanations.
• All new algorithms include a corresponding test class that validates their functionality.
• All new code is formatted with clang-format -i --style=file path/to/your/file.java

Description

This pull request addresses accessibility, null safety, and consistency in ExponentialSearch:

1. Public and Final Class Access: ExponentialSearch was package-private, preventing instantiation or usage by callers outside com.thealgorithms.searches. Marked the class public final class ExponentialSearch implements SearchAlgorithm consistent with other search algorithms in this package.
2. Null and Empty Input Safety: Added guard against null array, empty array, and null key returning -1 instead of throwing NullPointerException.
3. Comparable Contract Consistency: Replaced array[0].equals(key) and array[array.length - 1].equals(key) with key.compareTo(...) == 0 for proper Comparable semantics.
4. Expanded Test Suite: Added tests for null array, null key, single-element array with absent target, duplicate elements, and string arrays.

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[hardikkaurani]

@alxkm Hi! I have submitted this PR to add null and empty array safety to ExponentialSearch, make the class public and final for external library callers, use consistent Comparable equality, and expand the test suite. Please review when you have a moment. Thanks!

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 82.18%. Comparing base (18c99d9) to head (447533a).

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff              @@
##             master    #7651      +/-   ##
============================================
- Coverage     82.19%   82.18%   -0.01%     
  Complexity     8379     8379              
============================================
  Files           842      842              
  Lines         26101    26101              
  Branches       5090     5090              
============================================
- Hits          21454    21452       -2     
  Misses         3858     3858              
- Partials        789      791       +2     

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[alxkm]

Looks good. Nice that the edge checks now use compareTo. Thank you for the contribution.