【LeetCode】解题122：Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II

Problem 122: Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II [Easy]

Say you have an array prices for which the i^th element is the price of a given stock on day i.

Design an algorithm to find the maximum profit. You may complete as many transactions as you like (i.e., buy one and sell one share of the stock multiple times).

Note: You may not engage in multiple transactions at the same time (i.e., you must sell the stock before you buy again).

Example 1:

Input: [7,1,5,3,6,4]
Output: 7
Explanation: Buy on day 2 (price = 1) and sell on day 3 (price = 5), profit = 5-1 = 4.
Then buy on day 4 (price = 3) and sell on day 5 (price = 6), profit = 6-3 = 3.

Example 2:

Input: [1,2,3,4,5]
Output: 4
Explanation: Buy on day 1 (price = 1) and sell on day 5 (price = 5), profit = 5-1 = 4.
Note that you cannot buy on day 1, buy on day 2 and sell them later, as you are
engaging multiple transactions at the same time. You must sell before buying again.

Example 3:

Input: [7,6,4,3,1]
Output: 0
Explanation: In this case, no transaction is done, i.e. max profit = 0.

Constraints:

• 1 <= prices.length <= 3 * 10 ^ 4
• 0 <= prices[i] <= 10 ^ 4

来源：LeetCode

解题思路

本题只需遍历一遍数组，将给定的每日价格数组看作折线图，多次交易的最大利润应该是每一段上升线段差值的累计。
借用LeetCode官方题解的图来理解为何每一段上升都要计入：
第一种情况： 两段上升非严格递增

这一种情况容易有在valley_i买入在peak_j卖出比两次交易利润更大的错觉，但其实永远有$A+B\ge C$。因此valley_i ~ peak_i、valley_j ~ peak_j这两上升段的差值都应该计入总利润。

第二种情况： 两段上升严格递增

很明显有$A+B+C=D$，因此累计每一段差值和直接计算最大差值的效果是一样的。

具体过程：

• maxP变量。
• 遍历数组，累计每一段上升线段，公式为：
  m a x P = m a x P + max ⁡ { 0 , p r i c e s [ i ] − p r i c e s [ i − 1 ] } maxP = maxP + \max\{0, prices[i] - prices[i-1]\} maxP=maxP+max{0,prices[i]−prices[i−1]}
  其中$prices[i]$为当前价格。
• 最后返回最大利润值maxP。

时间复杂度为$O(n)$，空间复杂度为$O(1)$。

运行结果：

Solution (Java)

class Solution {
    public int maxProfit(int[] prices) {
        int N = prices.length;
        if(N < 2) return 0;
        int maxP = 0;
        for(int i = 1; i < N; i++){
            if(prices[i] > prices[i-1]){
                maxP += prices[i] - prices[i-1];
            }
        }
        return maxP;
    }
}