Search in a Big Sorted Array

Given a big sorted array with non-negative integers sorted by non-decreasing order. The array is so big so that you can not get the length of the whole array directly, and you can only access the kth number by ArrayReader.get(k) (or ArrayReader->get(k) for C++).

Find the first index of a target number. Your algorithm should be in O(log k), where k is the first index of the target number.

Return -1, if the number doesn't exist in the array.

Example

Example 1:

Input: [1, 3, 6, 9, 21, ...], target = 3
Output: 1

Example 2:

Input: [1, 3, 6, 9, 21, ...], target = 4
Output: -1

Challenge

O(logn) time, n is the first index of the given target number.

Notice

If you accessed an inaccessible index (outside of the array), ArrayReader.get will return 2,147,483,647.

思路：就是两倍递增，找到end的边界，然后用binary search即可，然后剩下的就是套用九章的模板写。很快了。

public class Solution {
    /**
     * @param reader: An instance of ArrayReader.
     * @param target: An integer
     * @return: An integer which is the first index of target.
     */
    public int searchBigSortedArray(ArrayReader reader, int target) {
        if(reader.get(0) == target) {
            return 0;
        }
        int start = 0; int end = 1;
        while(reader.get(end) < target) {
            end = end * 2;
        }
        
        while(start + 1 < end) {
            int mid = start + (end - start) / 2;
            if(reader.get(mid) < target) {
                start = mid;
            } else {
                end = mid;
            }
        }
        
        if(reader.get(start) == target) {
            return start;
        }
        if(reader.get(end) == target) {
            return end;
        }
        return -1;
    }
}