744. Find Smallest Letter Greater Than Target

Problem Link

Description

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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

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Python3

class Solution:
    def nextGreatestLetter(self, letters: List[str], target: str) -> str:
        m = None
 
        for x in letters:
            if x > target and (m is None or x < m):
                m = x
 
        return letters[0] if m is None else m