11. Container With Most Water

Medium
Array
Two Pointers
Greedy

Description

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

Hints

Hint 1
If you simulate the problem, it will be O(n^2) which is not efficient.
Hint 2
Try to use two-pointers. Set one pointer to the left and one to the right of the array. Always move the pointer that points to the lower line.
Hint 3
How can you calculate the amount of water at each step?

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