0011: Container With Most Water

Problem Statement

You are given an integer array height of length n. There are n vertical lines drawn such that the two endpoints of the ith line are (i, 0) and (i, height[i]).

Find two lines that together with the x-axis form a container, such that the container contains the most water.

Return the maximum amount of water a container can store.

Notice that you may not slant the container.

Example 1:

Input: height = [1,8,6,2,5,4,8,3,7]
Output: 49
Explanation: The above vertical lines are represented by array [1,8,6,2,5,4,8,3,7]. In this case, the max area of water (blue section) the container can contain is 49.

Example 2:

Input: height = [1,1]
Output: 1

Constraints:

  • n == height.length
  • 2 <= n <= 105
  • 0 <= height[i] <= 104

Code Solution

class Solution:
    def maxArea(self, height):
        
        N = len(height)
        
        lx, rx = 0, N - 1
        
        cmax = 0
        while lx < rx:
            if height[lx] <= height[rx]:
                minH = min(height[lx], height[rx])
                cmax = max(cmax, minH * (rx - lx))
                lx = lx + 1
            else:
                minH = min(height[lx], height[rx])
                cmax = max(cmax, minH * (rx - lx))
                rx = rx - 1
        return cmax