Challenge 3 -- More Samples

We are looking for "closest" to either end so that means we only care about the "first match" (from left/start) and "last index" (from last/end).

Given: [5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3]
Say we look for a match of "5"

first left match is on left end (zero positions from left end) = 0
first right match is one from right end (one position from right end) = 1
0 < 1, so "left" wins. In other words, the first left match is closer to the left end (0) than the first right match is to the right end (1).
Now we return result as actual array index, because it's left end, it would simply be 0.

Given: [8, 9, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 0]
Say we look for a match of "5"

first left match is two from left end (two positions from left end) = 2
first right match is one from right end (one position from right end) = 1
1 < 2, so "right" wins. In other words, the first right match is closer to the right end (1) than the left match is to the left end (2).
Now we return result as actual array index, because it's right end, we have to convert to actual array index which is always from left end and zero-based, so in this case we return 7

Data Structures And Algorithms (DSA) (Chapter 102 - Introduction to Pseudocode)