Write an efficient algorithm that searches for a value in an m x n matrix. This matrix has the following properties:
- Integers in each row are sorted in ascending from left to right.
- Integers in each column are sorted in ascending from top to bottom.
For example,
Consider the following matrix:
[ [1, 4, 7, 11, 15], [2, 5, 8, 12, 19], [3, 6, 9, 16, 22], [10, 13, 14, 17, 24], [18, 21, 23, 26, 30] ]
Given target = 5
, return true
.
Given target = 20
, return false
.
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To be as simple as possible, our target is to find the target element as efficient as possible. (No requirement in the question but obviously two for-loop will be too easy)
The best way of looking is from top-right corner to start looking, due to the property of such matrix -- right & bottom means bigger element. What we expect to do is to narrow down the scope by comparing bigger or smaller than the target element. Since the top-left is the smallest and bottom-right is the biggest, we need to start from a "middle" point, top-right or bottom -left.
Here is my code as follow:
public class Solution {
public boolean searchMatrix(int[][] matrix, int target) {
if(matrix.length==0 || matrix[0].length==0)
return false;
int row = 0;
int col = matrix[0].length-1;
while(row<=matrix.length-1 && col>=0){
if(target == matrix[row][col])
return true;
else if(target > matrix[row][col])
row++;
else
col--;
}
return false;
}
}