LeetCode #153: Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

Problem Statement

(Source) Suppose a sorted array is rotated at some pivot unknown to you beforehand.

(i.e., 0 1 2 4 5 6 7 might become 4 5 6 7 0 1 2).

Find the minimum element.

You may assume no duplicate exists in the array.

Analysis

Be naive first. One-pass scan can find the minimum element.

class Solution(object):
    def findMin(self, nums):
        return min(nums)

The time complexity is O(n).

Considering that the array is rotated at most once. If the array isn’t rotated at all, then the first element would be the minimum. Otherwise, we can do a linear scan, and the first element that is smaller that its previous element is the minimum.

class Solution(object):
    def findMin(self, nums):
        """
        :type nums: List[int]
        :rtype: int
        """
        for i in xrange(1, len(nums)):
            if nums[i] < nums[i - 1]:
                return nums[i]
        return nums[0]

The time complexity is O(n) at the worst case.

The optimised solution would be using Binary Search.

class Solution(object):
    def findMin(self, nums):
        """
        :type nums: List[int]
        :rtype: int
        """
        lo, hi = 0, len(nums) - 1
        while lo <= hi:
            mid = (lo + hi) >> 1
            if nums[mid] > nums[lo]:
                if nums[lo] <= nums[hi]:
                    return nums[lo]
                else:
                    lo = mid + 1
            elif nums[mid] < nums[lo]:
                hi = mid
            else:
                return min(nums[lo], nums[hi])

The time complexity is $O(logn)$.