744. Find Smallest Letter Greater Than Target

Given a list of sorted characters letters containing only lowercase letters, and given a target letter target, find the smallest element in the list that is larger than the given target.

Letters also wrap around. For example, if the target is target = 'z' and letters = ['a', 'b'], the answer is 'a'.

Examples:

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "a"
Output: "c"

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "c"
Output: "f"

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "d"
Output: "f"

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "g"
Output: "j"

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "j"
Output: "c"

Input:
letters = ["c", "f", "j"]
target = "k"
Output: "c"

Note:

1. letters has a length in range [2, 10000].
2. letters consists of lowercase letters, and contains at least 2 unique letters.
3. target is a lowercase letter.

AC code:

class Solution {
public:
    char nextGreatestLetter(vector<char>& letters, char target) {
        int len = letters.size();
        for (int i = 0; i < len ; ++i) {
            if (target < letters[i]) {
                return letters[i];
            }
        }
        return letters[0];
        
    }
};

20ms

class Solution {
public:
    char nextGreatestLetter(vector<char>& letters, char target) {
        auto it = upper_bound(letters.begin(), letters.end(), target);
        return it == letters.end() ? letters[0] : *it;
    }
};

Runtime: 8 ms, faster than 97.98% of C++ online submissions for Find Smallest Letter Greater Than Target.