34. Find First and Last Position of Element in Sorted Array

Description

Given an array of integers nums sorted in non-decreasing order, find the starting and ending position of a given target value.
If target is not found in the array, return [-1, -1].
You must write an algorithm with O(log n) runtime complexity.

---

Exceptions

There will be a chance that the target cannot be found in the array.

Python Code

The array is sorted and we need a O(logn) solution. So we can use the binary search template to find the first target and then find the last target.The only difference is:
find first: if nums[mid] == target: end = mid and check if nums[start] == target in the end.
find last: if nums[mid] == target: start = mid and check if nums[end] == target in the end.

    def searchRange(self, nums: List[int], target: int) -> List[int]:
        if not nums:
            return [-1, -1]
        start, end = 0, len(nums) - 1
        res = [-1, -1]
        
        #find first
        '''
        remember start < end - 1 to avoid infinite loop
        '''
        while start < end - 1:
            mid = (start + end) // 2
            '''
            mid need to be included as well
            '''
            if nums[mid] >= target:
                end = mid
            else:
                start = mid
        '''
        check start first since we are finding the first target position
        '''
        if nums[start] == target:
            res[0] = start
        elif nums[end] == target:
            res[0] = end
            
        # find last  
        start, end = 0, len(nums) - 1 
        while start < end - 1:
            mid = (start + end) // 2
            if nums[mid] <= target:
                start = mid
            else:
                end = mid
        if nums[end] == target:
            res[1] = end
        elif nums[start] == target:
            res[1] = start
            
        return res

---