Compute the maximal length of the increasing subsequence in an array

The idea to solve this problem goes as follows: Suppose there is an array of n element A. If the maximal length of the increasing sequence lying within the first k elements is known, denoted as L(k), then what we will do next is to compare A[k+1] with the maximal element of that increasing sequence, denoted as M[L(k)]. If A[k+1] is greater than M[L(k)], then the maximal length of the first (k+1) elements is L(k)+1, and M[L(k+1)] is assigned by A[k+1]; If A[k+1] is smaller than M[L(k)], then all the information about the increasing sequence with length L(k) will not be changed, however, A[k+1] may influence the increasing sequence with length L(k)-1, if A[k+1] is greater than its maximal element. If so, M[L(k)] will be updated by A[k] so that there will be more chance for this increasing sequence to grow longer. Therefore, we need to maintain all the maximal elements of increasing sequences with length from 1 to the current maximal length, i.e., the array M. OK, here is the c++ implementation.

1. #include <iostream>
2. using namespace std;
4. // Return the Max Length of Increasing Subsequence (MLIS).
5. int mlis(int* array, int n) {
6.     int maxlen = 1;
7.     int* lis = new int[n]; // lis[i] is the MLIS ending with array[i].
8.     for(int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
9.         lis[i] = 1;
10.     }
11.     int* minmax = new int[n+1]; // minmax[i] is the minimal "max value" of subsequence with length i.
12.     minmax[0] = 0x80000000;
13.     minmax[1] = array[0];
14.     for(int i = 1; i < n; ++i) {
15.         int j;
16.         for(j = maxlen; j >= 0; --j) {
17.             if(array[i] > minmax[j]) {
18.                 lis[i] = j + 1;
19.                 break;
20.             }
21.         }
22.         if(lis[i] > maxlen) {
23.             maxlen = lis[i];
24.             minmax[lis[i]] = array[i];
25.         }
26.         else {
27.             minmax[j+1] = array[i];
28.         }
29.     }
30.     delete[] lis;
31.     delete[] minmax;
32.     return maxlen;
33. }
35. int main() {
36.     int array[10] = {3, -2, 2, 1, 5, 6, 3, 4, 8, 7};
37.     int maxlen = mlis(array, 10);
38.     cout << "max length: " << maxlen << endl;
39.     return 0;
40. }

The command line prints:

max length: 5