Question

An interesting question I found, asked that an NxN matrix be rotated, in-place by 90 degrees. My recursive solution, in C, is below. However when I looked up other solutions, most used a nested for loop to accomplish the task (which seems to work fine). The nested loop implementations appear to run in O(n^2) time.

See:
How do you rotate a two dimensional array?

I believe the recursive solution runs in O( (n^2-n)/2 ), which is O(n^2) as well. My question is two-fold. 1) Is my complexity analysis above correct for both the recursive and non-recursive solutions, and 2) Is there some highly efficient or clever way to rotate a matrix that I haven’t found?

TIA.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>


int SIZE = 0;


/**
 * In-place, recursive, clockwise, 90 degree matrix rotation.
 */
static void rotate_in_place( int matrix[][SIZE], int n )
{
    if( n < 2 )
        return;


    int temp1, temp2;

    for( int i = 0; i < (n-1); i++ )
    {
        temp1 = matrix[i][n-1];
        matrix[i][n-1] = matrix[0][i];

        temp2 = matrix[n-1][n-i-1];
        matrix[n-1][n-i-1] = temp1;

        temp1 = matrix[n-i-1][0];
        matrix[n-i-1][0] = temp2;

        matrix[0][i] = temp1;
    }


    matrix = ((int*)matrix) + SIZE + 1;
    n -= 2;
    rotate_in_place( matrix, n );
}


static void print_matrix( int matrix[][SIZE] )
{
    printf( "\n" );
    for( int i = 0; i < SIZE; i++ )
    {
        for( int j = 0; j < SIZE; j++ )
            printf( "%4i ", matrix[i][j] );

        printf( "\n" );
    }
}


int main()
{

    // Create some matrices and rotate them.
    //
        int matrices = 10;

        for( int i = 2; i < matrices; i++ )
        {
            int matrix[i][i];

            int count = 0;
            for( int j = 0; j < i; j++ )
                for( int k = 0; k < i; k++ )
                    matrix[j][k] = ++count;


            printf( "\n\nRotating %ix%i matrix.\n", i, i );

            SIZE = i;

            printf( "\nOriginal matrix.\n" );
            print_matrix( matrix );

            rotate_in_place( matrix, i );

            printf( "\n\nRotated matrix.\n" );
            print_matrix( matrix );
        }


    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Answer 1

Rotation can’t be done in less than n^2 operations as you are required to swap all element. Usually, however, as rotation trash the cache pretty hard, we avoid performing it 😉