[LeetCode]152. Maximum Product Subarray

Description:

Find the contiguous subarray within an array (containing at least one number) which has the largest product.

For example, given the array [2,3,-2,4],
the contiguous subarray [2,3] has the largest product = 6.

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Solution:

题意：在给定数组中找到连续元素组成的子数组，使得它们的乘积最大。

思路：和53. Maximum Subarray不同，这里的负数乘积之前需要“交换”局部最大和最小值，以此得到全局最大值。

这里直接贴出Discuss的答案，附带注释，简洁明了。

int maxProduct(int A[], int n) {
    // store the result that is the max we have found so far
    int r = A[0];

    // imax/imin stores the max/min product of
    // subarray that ends with the current number A[i]
    for (int i = 1, imax = r, imin = r; i < n; i++) {
        // multiplied by a negative makes big number smaller, small number bigger
        // so we redefine the extremums by swapping them
        if (A[i] < 0)
            swap(imax, imin);

        // max/min product for the current number is either the current number itself
        // or the max/min by the previous number times the current one
        imax = max(A[i], imax * A[i]);
        imin = min(A[i], imin * A[i]);

        // the newly computed max value is a candidate for our global result
        r = max(r, imax);
    }
    return r;
}