Leetcode 152. Maximum Product Subarray

Problem

Given an integer array nums, find a contiguous non-empty subarray within the array that has the largest product, and return the product.

The test cases are generated so that the answer will fit in a 32-bit integer.

A subarray is a contiguous subsequence of the array.

Algorithm

Dynamic Programming (DP). Due to positive and negative, the maximum value may be obtained from the minimum value.

• Status 1 : max_ans[i] is the max value that can get from the sub array[0, i+1]
• Status 2 : min_ans[i] is the min value that can get from the sub array[0, i+1]
• Status 1 transfer : max_ans[i] = max(max_ans[i-1] * nums[i], min_ans[i-1] * max_ans[i], nums[i])
• Status 2 transfer : min_ans[i] = min(max_ans[i-1] * nums[i], min_ans[i-1] * max_ans[i], nums[i])

Code

class Solution:
    def maxProduct(self, nums: List[int]) -> int:
        nLen = len(nums)
        max_ans = [nums[0]] * nLen
        min_ans = [nums[0]] * nLen
        for i in range(1, nLen):
            max_ans[i] = nums[i]
            if max_ans[i] < min_ans[i-1] * nums[i]:
                max_ans[i] = min_ans[i-1] * nums[i]
            if max_ans[i] < max_ans[i-1] * nums[i]:
                max_ans[i] = max_ans[i-1] * nums[i]
            min_ans[i] = nums[i]
            if min_ans[i] > min_ans[i-1] * nums[i]:
                min_ans[i] = min_ans[i-1] * nums[i]
            if min_ans[i] > max_ans[i-1] * nums[i]:
                min_ans[i] = max_ans[i-1] * nums[i]
            
        return max(max(min_ans), max(max_ans))