last position of target / first position of target

Last Position of Target

Find the last position of a target number in a sorted array. Return -1 if target does not exist.

O(log n)

public class Solution {
    /**
     * @param nums: An integer array sorted in ascending order
     * @param target: An integer
     * @return an integer
     */
    public int lastPosition(int[] nums, int target) {
        if (nums == null || nums.length == 0) {
            return -1;
        }
        int start = 0;
        int end = nums.length - 1;
        while (start + 1 < end) {
            int mid = (start + end) / 2;
            if (target < nums[mid]) { //向后逼近
                end = mid;
            } else {
                start = mid;
            }
        }
        if (nums[end] == target) {
            return end;
        } else if (nums[start] == target) {
            return start;
        } else {
            return -1;
        }
    }
}

First Position of Target

For a given sorted array (ascending order) and a targetnumber, find the first index of this number in O(log n)time complexity.

If the target number does not exist in the array, return -1.

Example

If the array is [1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 10], for given target 3, return 2.

O(log n)

class Solution {
    /**
     * @param nums: The integer array.
     * @param target: Target to find.
     * @return: The first position of target. Position starts from 0.
     */
    public int binarySearch(int[] nums, int target) {
        if(nums == null || nums.length == 0) {
            return -1;
        }
        int start = 0, end = nums.length - 1;
        while(start + 1 < end) {
            int mid = start + (end - start) / 2;
            if(nums[mid] < target) { // 向前逼近
                start = mid; 
            } else {
                end = mid;
            }
        }
        if(nums[start] == target) {//check the first position first
            return start;
        } else if(nums[end] == target) {
            return end;
        } 
        return -1;
    }
}