Leetcode 744. Find Smallest Letter Greater Than Target

Problem

Given a characters array letters that is sorted in non-decreasing order and a character target, return the smallest character in the array that is larger than target.
Note that the letters wrap around.

• For example, if target == ‘z’ and letters == [‘a’, ‘b’], the answer is ‘a’.

Algorithm

Binary Search.

Code

class Solution:
    def nextGreatestLetter(self, letters: List[str], target: str) -> str:
        L, R = 0, len(letters)-1
        while L < R:
            Mid = (L + R) // 2
            if letters[Mid] <= target:
                L = Mid + 1
            else: R = Mid
        if letters[R] <= target:
            return letters[0]
        return letters[R]