123. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock III

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

Design an algorithm to find the maximum profit. You may complete at most two transactions.

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: [3,3,5,0,0,3,1,4]
Output: 6
Explanation: Buy on day 4 (price = 0) and sell on day 6 (price = 3), profit = 3-0 = 3.
             Then buy on day 7 (price = 1) and sell on day 8 (price = 4), profit = 4-1 = 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.

public class Solution{
	public int maxProfit(int[] prices){
		int hold1 = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
		int hold2 = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
		int release1 = 0;
		int release2 = 0;
		for(int i : prices){
			//Assume we only have 0 money at first
			//The maximum if we've just sold 2nd stock so far
			release2 = Math.max(release2, hold2 + i);
			//The maximum if we've just buy 2nd stock so far
			hold2 = Math.max(hold2, release1 - i);
			//The maximum if we've just sold 1nd stock so far
			release1 = Math.max(release1, hold1 + i);
			//The maximum if we've just buy 1st stock so far
			hold1 = Math.max(hold1, -i);
		}
		return release2;
	}
}