How can I find a number which occurs an odd number of times in a SORTED array in O(n) time?

Question

I have a question and I tried to think over it again and again... but got nothing so posting the question here. Maybe I could get some view-point of others, to try and make it w

Answer 1

I have an algorithm which works in log(N/C)*log(K), where K is the length of maximum same-value range, and C is the length of range being searched for.

The main difference of this algorithm from most posted before is that it takes advantage of the case where all same-value ranges are short. It finds boundaries not by binary-searching the entire array, but by first quickly finding a rough estimate by jumping back by 1, 2, 4, 8, ... (log(K) iterations) steps, and then binary-searching the resulting range (log(K) again).

The algorithm is as follows (written in C#):

// Finds the start of the range of equal numbers containing the index "index", 
// which is assumed to be inside the array
// 
// Complexity is O(log(K)) with K being the length of range
static int findRangeStart (int[] arr, int index)
{
    int candidate = index;
    int value = arr[index];
    int step = 1;

    // find the boundary for binary search:
    while(candidate>=0 && arr[candidate] == value)
    {
        candidate -= step;
        step *= 2;
    }

    // binary search:
    int a = Math.Max(0,candidate);
    int b = candidate+step/2;
    while(a+1!=b)
    {
        int c = (a+b)/2;
        if(arr[c] == value)
            b = c;
        else
            a = c;
    }
    return b;
}

// Finds the index after the only "odd" range of equal numbers in the array.
// The result should be in the range (start; end]
// The "end" is considered to always be the end of some equal number range.
static int search(int[] arr, int start, int end)
{
    if(arr[start] == arr[end-1])
        return end;

    int middle = (start+end)/2;

    int rangeStart = findRangeStart(arr,middle);

    if((rangeStart & 1) == 0)
        return search(arr, middle, end);
    return search(arr, start, rangeStart);
}

// Finds the index after the only "odd" range of equal numbers in the array
static int search(int[] arr)
{
    return search(arr, 0, arr.Length);
}