LC011 - Container With Most Water

Problem

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

Input: height = [1,8,6,2,5,4,8,3,7]

Output: 49

Explanation: In this case, the max area of water (blue section) the container can contain is 49.

Solution

Two pointer solution. Time complexity is $O(n)$.

def maxArea(self, height: List[int]) -> int:
	res = 0
	left = 0
	right = len(height) - 1

	while left < right:
		minH = min(height[left], height[right])
		area = minH * (right - left)
		res = max(res, minH * area)

		if height[left] < height[right]:
			left += 1
		else:
			right -= 1

	return res