LeetCode in Kotlin

162. Find Peak Element

Medium

A peak element is an element that is strictly greater than its neighbors.

Given a 0-indexed integer array nums, find a peak element, and return its index. If the array contains multiple peaks, return the index to any of the peaks.

You may imagine that nums[-1] = nums[n] = -∞. In other words, an element is always considered to be strictly greater than a neighbor that is outside the array.

You must write an algorithm that runs in O(log n) time.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,2,3,1]

Output: 2

Explanation: 3 is a peak element and your function should return the index number 2.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [1,2,1,3,5,6,4]

Output: 5

Explanation: Your function can return either index number 1 where the peak element is 2, or index number 5 where the peak element is 6.

Constraints:

Solution

class Solution {
    fun findPeakElement(nums: IntArray): Int {
        var start = 0
        var end = nums.size - 1
        while (start < end) {
            // This is done because start and end might be big numbers, so it might exceed the
            // integer limit.
            val mid = start + (end - start) / 2
            if (nums[mid + 1] > nums[mid]) {
                start = mid + 1
            } else {
                end = mid
            }
        }
        return start
    }
}