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Container With Most Water

Medium

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.

Examples

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.

Approach 1: Optimal

O(n)
O(1)
class Solution {
    public int maxArea(int[] height) {
        var l = 0;
        var r = height.length - 1;
        var maxArea = 0;
        while (l < r) {
            var area = (r - l) * Math.min(height[l], height[r]);
            maxArea = Math.max(area, maxArea);
            if (height[l] < height[r]) {
                l ++;
            } else {
                r --;
            }
        }
        return maxArea;
    }
}

Status

Solved

Complexity

Time
O(n)
Space
O(1)

Tags

ArrayBlind-75

Date

2026-01-29
View Problem Source