153. Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

Suppose an array sorted in ascending order 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.

Example 1:

Input: [3,4,5,1,2]
Output: 1
Example 2:

Input: [4,5,6,7,0,1,2]
Output: 0

方法1: binary search

思路：

我们的目标是找到一个nums[mid - 1] ＞ nums[mid]，为了不越界，从left = 1开始遍历。采用left<right的终止条件。当出现满足条件的值，直接返回nums[mid]，否则，需要判断需要往那边走。我们通过判断nums[mid] 和nums[right]，注意这里不用left和mid判断大小，因为在edge case的时候left == mid，没有任何信息量来判断应该往左还是往右。最后，出循环的时候一定是因为left== right。此时如果当前点left并不符合条件，那么一定是因为整个序列都是递增，那么此时剩下的一个nums[0]如果比left大，left为最小，如果比left小，nums[0]为结果。简而言之，left和nums[0]较小为结果。

Complexity

Time complexity: O(log n)
Space complexity: O(1)

class Solution {
public:
    int findMin(vector<int>& nums) {
        int n = nums.size();
        if (n == 1) return nums[0];
        int left = 1, right = n - 1;
        while (left < right) {
            int mid = left + (right - left) / 2;
            if (nums[mid - 1] > nums[mid]) return nums[mid];
            else {
                if (nums[mid] <= nums[right]) right = mid;
                else left = mid + 1;
            }
        }
        if (nums[left - 1] > nums[left]) return nums[left];
        return nums[0];
    }
};

另一种写法：

class Solution1 {
public:
    int findMin(vector<int>& nums) {
        if (nums.size() == 0) return NULL;
        if (nums.size() == 1) return nums[0];
        
        int left = 1;
        int right = nums.size() - 1;
        while (left <= right){
            int mid = left + (right - left) / 2;
            if (nums[mid - 1] > nums[mid]) return nums[mid];
            if (nums[mid] <= nums[right]){
                right = mid - 1;
            }
            else{
                left = mid + 1;
            }
        }
        
        return min(nums[left-1], nums[left]);
    }
    
};

方法2: recursion

思路：

//分治
class Solution2 {
public:
   int findMin(vector<int>& nums) {
        
        int left = 0;
        int right = nums.size() - 1;
       
        return findHelper(nums, left, right);
   }
   
   int findHelper(vector<int> &nums, int left, int right){
       // 没有下面这个if语句会死循环
       // 无法解决left = mid < right, length = 2 的情况
       if (left >= right - 1) return min(nums[left], nums[right]);
       int mid = left + (right - left) / 2;
       if (nums[left] < nums[right]){
           return nums[left];
       } 
       else if (nums[mid] <= nums[right]){  
           return min(nums[mid], findHelper(nums, left, mid - 1));
       }
       else return min(nums[left], findHelper(nums, mid, right));
   }
};