153. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

刷题笔记

153. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

题目

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.

思路

1. 这道题，与经典的binarysearch相比，不同点在于判断条件，那么关键点就是找出缩小判断范围的判断条件。
2. 要找出最小元素，最小元素的特点是比最右边的数小，而利用这一点就可以设置判断条件。如果一个数比右边数小，那么这个数仍然属于判断范围，将右侧边界缩小；如果它比右边数大，那么它是左侧array的数，可以把包括这个数在内的抛弃出判断范围；如果等于右边的数，则已经是最后一个数，那么返回这个数就是最小数（因为最后一定会有一个最小值）。

代码实现

class Solution {
    public int findMin(int[] nums) {
        int left = 0;
        int right = nums.length - 1;
        if (nums.length == 0) return 0;
        
        int min = binarySearchMin (nums, left, right);
        return min;
    }
    
    private int binarySearchMin (int[] nums, int left, int right) {
        while (left <= right) {
            int mid = left + (right - left) / 2;
            if (nums[mid] < nums[right]) {
                right = mid;
            } else if (nums[mid] == nums[right]) {
                return nums[mid];
            } else {
                left = mid + 1;
            }
        }
        return -1;
    }
}