max. distance of a number greater than a given number in array - arrays

Question

i was going through an interview question ..and came up with logic that requires to find:
Find an index j for an element a[j] larger than a[i] (with j < i), such that (i-j) is the largest. And I want to find this j for every index i in the array, in O(n) or O(n log n) time with O(n) extra space.`
What I have done until now :
1) O(n^2) by using simple for loops
2) Build balanced B.S.T. as we scan the elements from left to right and for i'th element find index of element greater than it. But I realized that it can easily be O(n) for single element, therefore O(n^2) for entire array.
I want to know if it is possible to do it in O(n) or O(n log n). If yes, please give some hints.
EDIT : i think i am unable to explain my question . let me explain it clearly:
i want arr[j] on left of arr[i] such that (i-j) is the largest possible ,and arr[j]>arr[i] and find this for all index i i.e.for(i=0 to n-1).
EDIT 2 :example - {2,3,1,6,0}
for 2 , ans=-1
for 3 , ans=-1
for 1 , ans=2 (i-j)==(2-0)
for 6 , ans=-1
for 0 , ans=4 (i-j)==(4-0)

Answer 1

Create an auxillary array of maximums, let it be maxs, which will basically contain the max value on the array up to the current index.
Formally: maxs[i] = max { arr[0], arr[1], ..., arr[i] }
Note that this is pre processing step that can be done in O(n)
Now for each element i, you are looking for the first element in maxs that is larger then arr[i]. This can be done using binary search, and is O(logn) per op.
Gives you total of O(nlogn) time and O(n) extra space.

Answer 2

You can do this in O(n) time using a stack data structure for array indexes for which you have yet to find a solution. It can be implemented as an array of at most n elements.
Iterate over the input array from left to right, starting with the last element:
Pop all indexes from the stack for which the array element is less than the current element. Mark the index of the current element as the solution for each index you pop.
Push the index of the current element on the stack.
Invariant: the array items corresponding to the indexes in the stack are always in ascending order, with the least item on top.
When you reach the beginning of the input, mark any items that still remain on the stack with -1; for them there is no answer.
Each array index is pushed into the stack exactly once and popped at most once, so this algorithm runs in O(n) time.
An example in Python:
def solution(arr):
stack = []
out = [-1]*len(arr)
for i in xrange(len(arr)-1, -1, -1):
while len(stack) > 0 and arr[stack[-1]] < arr[i]:
out[stack.pop()] = i
stack.append(i);
return out
Note that the correct answer for input [2, 4, 1, 5, 3] is [-1, -1, 1, -1, 3]: for a fixed i, the difference j-i is greatest when j is greatest, so you are looking for the leftmost index j, which minimizes the distance. (When j < i, the difference j-i is negative.)

Answer 3

The fastest solution I can think of is allocating a second array and scanning the array left-to-right. As you traverse the array and scan each element, append the index of the element to your second array if arr[index] is greater than the right-most element of your second array. This is O(1) time per append, maximum of n appends, so O(n).
Finally, once your array is complete, take a second pass through your array. For each element, scan your second array using binary search (this is possible since it is implicitly sorted) and find the leftmost (earliest inserted) index j in your array such that arr[j] > arr[i].
To do this, you have to do a modification of binary search. If you find an index j such that arr[j] > arr[i], you still have to check to see if there are any indices k to the left such that arr[k] > arr[i]. You must do this until you find the left-most index.
I think this is O(log n) per binary search and you have to do the search for n elements. So the total time complexity would be close to O(n log n), but I am not sure of this. Any comments/suggestions to this answer would be much appreciated.

Answer 4

Here's my solution in C++
We maintain an increasing array. Compare the current element with the element at the back of the array.
If it is larger or equals to the larget element so far, then append this element to the array, return -1, there's no smaller element on its left.
If not, we use a binary search, find the index and return the difference.
(We still need to append vec.back() to the array, because we cannot change the index)
int findIdx(vector<int>& vec, int target){
auto it = upper_bound(vec.begin(), vec.end(), target);
int idx = int(it-vec.begin());
return idx;
}
vector<int> farestBig(vector<int>& arr){
vector<int> ans{-1};
vector<int> vec{arr[0]};
int n = (int)arr.size();
for(int i=1; i<n; i++){
if(arr[i] >= vec.back()){
ans.push_back(-1);
vec.push_back(arr[i]);
}
else{
int idx = findIdx(vec, arr[i]);
ans.push_back(i-idx);
vec.push_back(vec.back());
}
}
return ans;
}