Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions
Ask Author
Back to course home

0% completed

Vote For New Content
Best Time to Buy and Sell (easy)
Table of Contents

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Problem Statement

You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the i^{th} day.

You want to maximize your profit by choosing a single day to buy one stock and choosing a different day in the future to sell that stock.

Return the maximum profit you can achieve from this transaction. If you cannot achieve any profit, return 0.

Examples

    • Input: [3, 2, 6, 5, 0, 3]
    • Expected Output: 4
    • Justification: Buy the stock on day 2 (price = 2) and sell it on day 3 (price = 6). Profit = 6 - 2 = 4.
    • Input: [8, 6, 5, 2, 1]
    • Expected Output: 0
  • Justification: Prices are continuously dropping, so no profit can be made.
    • Input: [1, 2]
    • Expected Output: 1
    • Justification: Buy on day 1 (price = 1) and sell on day 2 (price = 2). Profit = 2 - 1 = 1.

Constraints:

  • 1 <= prices.length <= 10<sup>5</sup>
  • 0 <= prices[i] <= 10<sup>4</sup>

Try it yourself

Try solving this question here:

Python3
Python3
. . . .

.....

.....

.....

Like the course? Get enrolled and start learning!

Table of Contents

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible

Contents are not accessible