Last updated: Nov 27, 2022
Difficulty : easy
Runtime : 91 ms Faster than 74.25 %
Memory : 44.1 mb Lesser than 37.32 %

744. Find Smallest Letter Greater Than Target

You are given an array of characters letters that is sorted in non-decreasing order, and a character target. There are at least two different characters in letters.

Return the smallest character in letters that is lexicographically greater than target. If such a character does not exist, return the first character in letters.

Example 1: Input: letters = ["c","f","j"], target = "a" Output: "c" Explanation: The smallest character that is lexicographically greater than 'a' in letters is 'c'.

Example 2: Input: letters = ["c","f","j"], target = "c" Output: "f" Explanation: The smallest character that is lexicographically greater than 'c' in letters is 'f'.

Example 3: Input: letters = ["x","x","y","y"], target = "z" Output: "x" Explanation: There are no characters in letters that is lexicographically greater than 'z' so we return letters[0].

Constraints:

  • 2 <= letters.length <= 104
  • letters[i] is a lowercase English letter.
  • letters is sorted in non-decreasing order.
  • letters contains at least two different characters.
  • target is a lowercase English letter.

Solution:

var nextGreatestLetter = function(letters, target) {
    var l = 0;
    var r = letters.length - 1;
    if(target >= letters[r]) return letters[0]
    while (l < r) {
        if(letters[l] < target || letters[l] === target) l++;
        if(letters[l] > target) {
            return letters[l];
        }
    }
};