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153. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array (Medium)

Suppose an array of length n sorted in ascending order is rotated between 1 and n times. For example, the array nums = [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] might become:

• [4,5,6,7,0,1,2] if it was rotated 4 times.
• [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] if it was rotated 7 times.

Notice that rotating an array [a[0], a[1], a[2], ..., a[n-1]] 1 time results in the array [a[n-1], a[0], a[1], a[2], ..., a[n-2]].

Given the sorted rotated array nums of unique elements, return the minimum element of this array.

You must write an algorithm that runs in O(log n) time.

 

Example 1:

Input: nums = [3,4,5,1,2]
Output: 1
Explanation: The original array was [1,2,3,4,5] rotated 3 times.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [4,5,6,7,0,1,2]
Output: 0
Explanation: The original array was [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] and it was rotated 4 times.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [11,13,15,17]
Output: 11
Explanation: The original array was [11,13,15,17] and it was rotated 4 times. 

 

Constraints:

• n == nums.length
• 1 <= n <= 5000
• -5000 <= nums[i] <= 5000
• All the integers of nums are unique.
• nums is sorted and rotated between 1 and n times.

Related Topics

[Array] [Binary Search]

Similar Questions

1. Search in Rotated Sorted Array (Medium)
2. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array II (Hard)

Hints

Hint 1

Array was originally in ascending order. Now that the array is rotated, there would be a point in the array where there is a small deflection from the increasing sequence. eg. The array would be something like [4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2].

Hint 2

You can divide the search space into two and see which direction to go. Can you think of an algorithm which has O(logN) search complexity?

Hint 3

1. All the elements to the left of inflection point > first element of the array.
2. All the elements to the right of inflection point < first element of the array.