Find First and Last Position of Element in Sorted Array(python)

Given an array of integers nums sorted in ascending order, find the starting and ending position of a given target value.

Your algorithm's runtime complexity must be in the order of O(log n).

If the target is not found in the array, return [-1, -1].

Example 1:

Input: nums = [5,7,7,8,8,10], target = 8
Output: [3,4]

Example 2:

Input: nums = [5,7,7,8,8,10], target = 6
Output: [-1,-1]

解题思路：

因为题目要求的的时间复杂度为O(log n）所以这道题肯定是需要二分法来查找的。但这个二分法查找有一点不一样。

要找到target的first position 和last position，只需要找到排序数组中的第一个大于等于target的数的位置（lowerbound），和第一个大于targe的数的位置(upperbound)，那么最后的target的fist position和last postion为(lowerbound,upperbound)，然后再处理一下其他特殊情况即可。

代码如下：

class Solution:
    def searchRange(self, nums: List[int], target: int) -> List[int]:
        if not nums:
            return [-1,-1]
        if len(nums) == 1:
            return [0,0] if nums[0] == target else [-1,-1]
           
        low = self.findLowerBound(nums,target)
        upper = self.findUpperBound(nums,target)
        return[low,upper]
        
        
    
    def findLowerBound(self, nums: List[int], target: int) -> int:
        # 此时找出的low是第一个大于或等于target的数 
        start = 0
        end = len(nums)-1
        # find lowerbound
        while start < end:
            mid = (start+end)//2
            if nums[mid] >= target:
                end = mid
            else:
                start = mid +1
        #print(start)
        if nums[start] == target:
            return start
        else:
            return -1
        
    def findUpperBound(self, nums: List[int], target: int) -> int:
        # find upperbound
        #此时upper找出的数是最后一个大于或等于target的（对于数组中的数全是target时，跳出条件也是start == end）
        start = 0
        end = len(nums)-1
        while start < end:
            mid = (start+end)//2
            if nums[mid] > target:
                end = mid 
            else:
                start = mid +1
                
        if nums[end] == target:
            return end
        elif nums[end-1] == target:
            return end-1
        else:
            return -1