Suppose we have an array called nums, we have to find the product of elements of a contiguous subarray within an array (containing at least one number) which has the largest product. So if the array is [1,9,2,0,2,5], the output will be 18, as contiguous subarray [1,9,2] has max product.
To solve this, we will follow these steps −
- max_list := list of size nums, and fill with 0
- min_list := list of size nums, and fill with 0
- min_list := list of size nums, and fill with 0
- for i in range 1 to length of nums
- max_list[i] = max of max_list[i - 1]*nums[i], min_list[i - 1]*nums[i] and nums[i]
- min_list[i] = minof min_list[i - 1]*nums[i], nums[i], max_list[i - 1]*nums[i]
- return the max of max_list
Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding −
Example
class Solution(object): def maxProduct(self, nums): max_list = [0] * len(nums) min_list = [0] * len(nums) max_list[0] = nums[0] min_list[0] = nums[0] for i in range(1,len(nums)): max_list[i] = max(max(max_list[i-1]*nums[i],min_list[i-1]*nums[i]),nums[i]) min_list[i] = min(min(min_list[i-1]*nums[i],nums[i]),max_list[i-1]*nums[i]) return max(max_list) ob1 = Solution() print(ob1.maxProduct([1,9,2,0,2,5]))
Input
[1,9,2,0,2,5]
Output
18