30 - Search for a Range

Given a sorted array of integers, 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].

For example,
Given [5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10] and target value 8,
return [3, 4].

solution： 两次二分查找，一次找下边缘，一次根据下边缘查找上边缘。

直观的方法就是二分法找到该数，然后直接线性搜索上下边缘，这样效率略低些，最差可能有O(n)。

看到还有一种非常巧妙的方法，依旧是二分，查找的target-0.5 和target+0.5,返回每次查找的下边缘。

class Solution {
public:
    vector<int> searchRange(int A[], int n, int target) {
        // Start typing your C/C++ solution below
        // DO NOT write int main() function
        vector<int>res(2,-1);
        
        if(A == NULL || n <= 0)
            return res;
        
        int start = 0;
        int end = n-1;
        
        //find left bound
        while(start < end)
        {
            int mid = start + (end - start) / 2;
            if(A[mid] < target)
                start = mid + 1;
            else
                end = mid;
        }
        if(A[start] != target)
            return res;
        res[0] = start;

        //find right bound， from res[0] till end
        end = n ;
        while(start < end)
        {
            int mid = start + (end - start)/2;
            if(A[mid] > target)
                end = mid;
            else
                start = mid + 1;
        }
        res[1] = end -1;
        
        return res;
    }
};