After many years of teaching algorithms, my approach for solving binary search problems is to set the start and the end on the elements, not outside of the array. This way I can feel what's going on and everything is under control, without feeling magic about the solution.
The key point in solving binary search problems (and many other loop-based solutions) is a set of good invariants. Choosing the right invariant makes problem-solving a cake. It took me many years to grasp the invariant concept although I had learned it first in college many years ago.
Even if you want to solve binary search problems by choosing start or end outside of the array, you can still achieve it with a proper invariant. That being said, my choice is stated above to always set a start on the first element and end on the last element of the array.
So to summarize, so far we have:
int start = 0;
int end = a.length - 1;
Now the invariant. The array right now we have is [start, end]. We don't know anything yet about the elements. All of them might be greater than the target, or all might be smaller, or some smaller and some larger. So we can't make any assumptions so far about the elements. Our goal is to find the first element greater than the target. So we choose the invariants like this:
Any element to the right of the end is greater than the target.
Any
element to the left of the start is smaller than or equal to the
target.
We can easily see that our invariant is correct at the start (ie before going into any loop). All the elements to the left of the start (no elements basically) are smaller than or equal to the target, same reasoning for the end.
With this invariant, when the loop finishes, the first element after the end will be the answer (remember the invariant that the right side of the end are all greater than the target?). So answer = end + 1.
Also, we need to note that when the loop finishes, the start will be one more than the end. ie start = end + 1. So equivalently we can say start is the answer as well (invariant was that anything to the left of the start is smaller than or equal to the target, so start itself is the first element larger than the target).
So everything being said, here is the code.
public static int find(int a[], int target) {
int st = 0;
int end = a.length - 1;
while(st <= end) {
int mid = (st + end) / 2; // or elegant way of st + (end - st) / 2;
if (a[mid] <= target) {
st = mid + 1;
} else { // mid > target
end = mid - 1;
}
}
return st; // or return end + 1
}
A few extra notes about this way of solving binary search problems:
This type of solution always shrinks the size of subarrays by at least 1. This is obvious in the code. The new start or end are either +1 or -1 in the mid. I like this approach better than including the mid in both or one side, and then reason later why the algo is correct. This way it's more tangible and more error-free.
The condition for the while loop is st <= end. Not st < end. That means the smallest size that enters the while loop is an array of size 1. And that totally aligns with what we expect. In other ways of solving binary search problems, sometimes the smallest size is an array of size 2 (if st < end), and honestly I find it much easier to always address all array sizes including size 1.
So hope this clarifies the solution for this problem and many other binary search problems. Treat this solution as a way to professionally understand and solve many more binary search problems without ever wobbling whether the algorithm works for edge cases or not.
