Search in Rotated Array

Last modified: July 21, 2026

There is an integer array nums sorted in ascending order (with distinct values).

Prior to being passed to your function, nums is possibly left rotated at an unknown index k (1 <= k < nums.length) such that the resulting array is [nums[k], nums[k+1], ..., nums[n-1], nums[0], nums[1], ..., nums[k-1]] (0-indexed). For example, [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] might be left rotated byΒ 3Β indices and become [4,5,6,7,0,1,2].

Given the array nums after the possible rotation and an integer target, return the index of target if it is in nums, or -1 if it is not in nums.

You must write an algorithm with O(log n) runtime complexity.

Example 1:

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

Solution

class Solution {
public:
    int search(vector<int>& nums, int target) {
        int L = 0, R = nums.size() - 1;

        while (L <= R) {
            int mid = L + (R - L) / 2;

            if (nums[mid] == target)
                return mid;

            if (nums[L] <= nums[mid]) {
                if (target<nums[mid] && target>=nums[L])
                    R = mid - 1;
                else
                    L = mid + 1;
            } else if (nums[R] >= nums[mid]) {
                if (target > nums[mid] && target<=nums[R])
                    L = mid + 1;
                else
                    R = mid - 1;
            }
        }
        return -1;
    }
};