34. Find First and Last Position of Element in Sorted Array
Finding the First and Last Position of an Element in a Sorted Array Using Binary Search Introduction Searching for an element in a sorted array is a common problem in computer science, and one of the most efficient ways to solve it is by using Binary Search . In this blog post, we'll discuss how to find the first and last positions of a target element in a sorted array using an optimized binary search approach. We'll also analyze its time complexity and why it outperforms brute-force methods. Problem Statement Given an array of integers nums sorted in non-decreasing order, we need to find the starting and ending position of a given target value. If target is not found, we return [-1, -1] . The solution must have a time complexity of O(log n) . Approach: Modified Binary Search Since the array is sorted, binary search is an ideal approach. Instead of a single search, we perform two separate searches: Finding the Leftmost Index : We modify the binary search to cont...