Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array in DSA Javascript - Build from Scratch

Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array

📖 Scenario: You have a list of numbers that was originally sorted from smallest to largest. Then, someone rotated it by moving some numbers from the front to the back. Your job is to find the smallest number in this rotated list.Imagine a circular queue of numbers where the smallest number is the point where the rotation happened.

🎯 Goal: Build a small program that finds the minimum number in a rotated sorted array using a simple loop.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called rotatedArray with the exact values [4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2].

Create a variable called minValue and set it to the first element of rotatedArray.

Use a for loop with variable i to go through each element in rotatedArray.

Inside the loop, update minValue if the current element is smaller.

Print the value of minValue.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Rotated sorted arrays appear in systems where data is shifted or rotated, like circular buffers or time-based logs. Finding the minimum quickly helps in searching and sorting tasks.

💼 Career

Understanding how to find minimum values in rotated arrays is useful for software engineers working on search algorithms, data processing, and optimization problems.

1

Create the rotated sorted array

Create an array called rotatedArray with these exact values: [4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2].

DSA Javascript

// Your code here

Hint

Use const rotatedArray = [...] to create the array with the exact numbers.

2

Set up the minimum value variable

Create a variable called minValue and set it to the first element of rotatedArray.

DSA Javascript

const rotatedArray = [4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2];
// Your code here

Hint

Use let minValue = rotatedArray[0]; to start with the first number as the minimum.

3

Find the minimum value using a loop

Use a for loop with variable i to go through each element in rotatedArray. Inside the loop, update minValue if the current element is smaller than minValue.

DSA Javascript

const rotatedArray = [4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2];
let minValue = rotatedArray[0];
// Your code here

Hint

Use a for loop to check each number. If a number is smaller than minValue, update minValue.

4

Print the minimum value

Write console.log(minValue) to print the smallest number found in rotatedArray.

DSA Javascript

const rotatedArray = [4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2];
let minValue = rotatedArray[0];
for (let i = 0; i < rotatedArray.length; i++) {
    if (rotatedArray[i] < minValue) {
        minValue = rotatedArray[i];
    }
}
// Your code here

Hint

Use console.log(minValue); to show the smallest number.