Lazy web,
I am looking for help constructing a modified binary search.

I have a large array of strings which contain duplicates sorted in ASCIIbetical order. Given two strings ($beg & $end), I want to find the number of elements in the array that are between the two points. My idea was to first perform a binary search to find the index of the nearest element to $beg and then $end and do some math.

Here are the two things that lead me to ask you dear lazy web.

• For $beg, I am looking for the first index (closest to 0) where $list[$idx] ge $beg
• For $end, I am looking for the last index (closest to $#list) where $list[$idx] le $end

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