Java arrays.binary search multiple matches?

Question

I need to find all elements in sorted array with Arrays.binarySearch method. I want to iterate binary search in lowerbound = pos + 1 (pos is previous match), but binarySearch is not guaranteed to return first match (min match index)?

How can I make this?

Answer 1

You can easily use the result of binarySearch to get all the matches :

long[] sortedArr = ...
int index = Arrays.binarySearch (sortedArr, value);
int first = index;
int last = index;
if (index >= 0) {
    while (first > 0 && sortedArr[first-1] == value)
        first--;
    while (last < sortedArr.length - 1 && sortedArr[last+1] == value)
        last++;
}

After you run this code, the indices between first and last (inclusive) are all the indices that contain the searched value.