Find minimum in rotated sorted array

Array Binary Search

53.8% acceptance

Jan 12, 2026

15135

663

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.

Solution

Rust

Time O(n log n)

Space O(1)

LeetCode

solution.rs

impl Solution {
  pub fn find_min(nums: Vec<i32>) -> i32 {
    let mut left = 0;
    let mut right = nums.len() - 1;
    
    while left < right {
      let mid = left + (right - left) / 2;
      
      if nums[mid] > nums[right] {
        left = mid + 1;
      } else {
        right = mid;
      }
    }
    
    nums[left]
  }
}