SESO04 - Editorial

editorial
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Problem Link

Problem Understanding

The problem requires us to determine the first position of a specified character in a given string. If the character exists in the string, we need to print its index (0-based). If the character does not exist in the string, we should print -1.

Approach

To solve the problem, we use a simple linear search approach. We iterate through each character in the string, comparing it to the target character. If we find a match, we immediately record the index of the first occurrence and break out of the loop. If no match is found after checking all characters, we output -1 to indicate that the character is not present in the string. This method ensures we efficiently find the first occurrence with a time complexity of O(n), where n is the length of the string.

Complexity Analysis

  • Time Complexity: The time complexity of this solution is O(n), where n is the length of the input string. In the worst case, the algorithm might need to check each character of the string to determine if the searchChar is present.

  • Space Complexity: The space complexity is O(1), as the solution only uses a few extra variables (position and loop counters) regardless of the input size.

Edge Cases

  • If the input string is empty, the algorithm will immediately output -1, as there are no characters to search through.
  • If the searchChar is the first character in the string, the algorithm will quickly find it and output 0.
  • If the searchChar does not exist in the string, the algorithm will correctly output -1.