Rotating an array in place

The answer is of course, yes. This is a trick so important that it becomes one of the frequently asked interview questions. An in-depth discussion is in Programming Pearls, one of the must-read book in Computer Science.

The trick is to do three reverse operation. One for the entire string, one from index 0 to k-1, and lastly index k to n-1. Magically, this will yield the correct rotated array, without any extra space! (Of course, you need a temporary variable for swapping).

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void reverse_string ( char * str , int left , int right ) {    char * p1 = str + left ;    char * p2 = str + right ;    while ( p1 < p2 ) {      char temp = * p1 ;      * p1 = * p2 ;      * p2 = temp ;      p1 ++ ;      p2 -- ;    } }   void rotate ( char * str , int k ) {    int n = strlen ( str ) ;    reverse_string ( str , 0 , n - 1 ) ;    reverse_string ( str , 0 , k - 1 ) ;    reverse_string ( str , k , n - 1 ) ; }