CODE 132: Candy

There are N children standing in a line. Each child is assigned a rating value.

You are giving candies to these children subjected to the following requirements:

• Each child must have at least one candy.
• Children with a higher rating get more candies than their neighbors.

What is the minimum candies you must give?

	public int candy(int[] ratings) {
		// IMPORTANT: Please reset any member data you declared, as
		// the same Solution instance will be reused for each test case.
		int[] left = new int[ratings.length];
		int[] right = new int[ratings.length];
		int min = 0;

		for (int i = 0; i < ratings.length; i++) {
			if (0 == i) {
				left[i] = 0;
				continue;
			}
			if (ratings[i] > ratings[i - 1]) {
				left[i] = left[i - 1] + 1;
			} else if (ratings[i] <= ratings[i - 1]) {
				left[i] = 0;
			} 
		}

		for (int i = ratings.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
			if (ratings.length - 1 == i) {
				right[i] = 0;
				continue;
			}
			if (ratings[i] > ratings[i + 1]) {
				right[i] = right[i + 1] + 1;
			} else if (ratings[i] <= ratings[i + 1]) {
				right[i] = 0;
			} 
		}

		for (int i = 0; i < ratings.length; i++) {
			min += left[i] > right[i] ? left[i] + 1 : right[i] + 1;
		}

		return min;
	}