Problem solving with programming: Finding count of a number in a sorted array

Problem solving with programming: Finding count of a number in a sorted array

In Competitive programming, learning to use the standard library than coding from scratch saves a lot of time. In this post we will use C++ STL(Standard Template Library) binary search algorithm with an example.
Given a sorted array of numbers, How to find the frequency of a given number?

Here is an efficient algorithm to do it. Use binary search to find the left-most(L), and right-most(R) occurrence of the given number. Then R-L+1 gives us the result. 

C++ STL has two functions namely lower_bound, upper_bound which finds out the left-most and right-most occurrences of a given number in a sorted array.
The lower_bound() function returns an iterator to the left-most element, and the upper_bound() function returns an iterator to one element beyond right-most occurrence. So the difference of these two gives the count.

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