LeetCode #744 Find Smallest Letter Greater Than Target

Easy

Problem

Given a list of sorted characters letters containing only lowercase letters, and given a target letter target, find the smallest element in the list that is larger than the given target.

Letters also wrap around. For example, if the target is target = 'z' and letters = ['a', 'b'], the answer is 'a'.

Examples:

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "a"
Output: "c"
Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "c"
Output: "f"
Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "d"
Output: "f"
Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "g"
Output: "j"
Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "j"
Output: "c"
Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "k"
Output: "c"

Note:

1. letters has a length in range [2, 10000].
2. letters consists of lowercase letters, and contains at least 2 unique letters.
3. target is a lowercase letter.

Solution

It can be easily resolved by using binary search for finding target position.

Complexity

It’s trivial that binary search takes O(logn) time and O(1) extra space.