[R] Fastest way to find the last index k such that x[k] < y in a sorted vector x?

[Thomas Lumley]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:

> Hi, I am trying to find the fastest way to
>
>   "find the last index k such that x[k] < y in a *sorted* vector x"
>
> These are my two alternatives:
>
>   x <- sort(rnorm(1e4))
>   y <- 0.2
>
>   # Alt 1
>   k <- max(1, sum(x < y))
>
>   # Alt 2 "divide and conquer"
>   lastIndexLessThan <- function(x, y) {
>     k0 <- 1; k1 <- length(x)
>     while ((dk <- (k1 - k0)) > 1) {
>       k <- k0 + dk %/% 2
>       if (x[k] < y) k0 <- k else k1 <- k
>     }
>     k0
>   }
>   k <- lastIndexLessThan(x, y)
>
> Simple benchmarking shows that alternative 1 is faster for short vectors and
> alternative 2 is faster for long vectors. I believe this is because alt 1 is
> implemented internally.

Yes.

>			 Is there an internal function of alternative 2 that
> I don't know about? It would be great because then it would probably be the
> fastest one on both short and long vectors.

You can use uniroot, eg.
	uniroot(function(i) (x[i]>y)-i/N,c(1,length(x)))$root-1
where N>length(x)

On the other hand, I had to go to vectors of length 10^5 to get any
reproducible difference between this and
 	max(which(x<y))

	-thomas

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