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How do I efficiently count elements less than a certain value in a sorted array?

Say for example I have a sorted array:

[21, 32, 58, 70, 100, 4342]

And a key value 80

How do I efficiently count all values from 80 below without iterating through the whole array with an if condition? I was thinking Binary Search but then again i’m not searching for any key, I just need the fastest way return the count of values less than or equal to key value.

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Answer

You can use Arrays.binarySearch. According to the documentation it returns the index of the search key, if it is contained in the array; otherwise, (-(insertion point) - 1). Using your example:

import java.util.Arrays;

class Main {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        int[] arr = {21, 32, 58, 70, 100, 4342};

        int res70 = Arrays.binarySearch(arr, 70);// returns 3
        int res80 = Arrays.binarySearch(arr, 80);// returns -5
    }
}

With that in mind, you can use that information to get an efficient count: if the result is positive, the count is result, if the result is negative, the count is (-result)-1 or -(result+1) (depending on your preference):

import java.util.Arrays;

class Main {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        int[] arr = {21, 32, 58, 70, 100, 4342};

        System.out.println("Count is:" + count(arr, 70));// returns 3
        System.out.println("Count is:" + count(arr, 80));// returns 4
    }

    private static int count(int[] sortedArray, int n) {
        int result = Arrays.binarySearch(sortedArray, n);
        if (result > -1) {
            return result;
        }
        return (-result) - 1;
    }
}

For the case where duplicates are possible, and multiple 80s exist in the array, there are two possible solutions:

  1. Do a linear search from the result of the binary search. This would make the worst-case O(n) though, while still being O(lg n) on average.

  2. Manually implement (or find a library that has) a binary search to find the last element equal to a value (while preserving the consideration for the element not found as the Java library does). An example of finding the last element exists in this answer: Last index of multiple keys using binary-search? That would keep worst-case at O(lg n).

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