Problem Statement

You have an array of length n, which was initially sorted in ascending order. This array was then rotated x times. It is given that 1 <= x <= n. For example, if you rotate [1, 2, 3, 4] array 3 times, resultant array is [2, 3, 4, 1].

Your task is to find the minimum element from this array. Note that the array contains unique elements.

You must write an algorithm that runs in O(log n) time.

Example 1:

• Input: [8, 1, 3, 4, 5]
• Expected Output: 1
• Justification: The smallest number in the array is 1.

Example 2:

• Input: [4, 5, 7, 8, 0, 2, 3]
• Expected Output: 0
• Justification: The smallest number in the array is 0.

Example 3:

• Input: [7, 9, 12, 3, 4, 5]
• Expected Output: 3
• Justification: In this rotated array, the smallest number present is 3.

Try it yourself

Try solving this question here: