Section 1Understand Problem
Section 01
Understand the problem
Restate the problem precisely. Interviewers reward candidates who pause, define the contract, and name the guarantees before coding.
Problem statement
Given an array of integers `nums` which is sorted in ascending order, and an integer `target`, write a function to search `target` in `nums`. If `target` exists, then return its index. Otherwise, return -1. You must write an algorithm with O(log n) runtime complexity.
Example
nums = [-1, 0, 3, 5, 9, 12], target = 9 → 4
Constraints
1 ≤ nums.length ≤ 10⁴ · −10⁴ < nums[i], target < 10⁴ · All values are unique · nums is sorted ascending
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