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LeetCode 33, Medium. Topics: Array, Binary Search. View on LeetCode. Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 15 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:

Problem

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 by 3 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.

Examples

Constraints

  • 1 <= nums.length <= 5000
  • -10^4 <= nums[i] <= 10^4
  • All values of nums are unique.
  • nums is an ascending array that is possibly rotated.
  • -10^4 <= target <= 10^4

Solution

Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:

Complexity

Tags

Grind 75, Grind, Blind 75, NeetCode 150, NeetCode 250, NeetCode All, AlgoMaster 75.
Last modified on August 25, 2026