LeetCode in Elixir

121. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

Easy

You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the ith 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.

Example 1:

Input: prices = [7,1,5,3,6,4]

Output: 5

Explanation: Buy on day 2 (price = 1) and sell on day 5 (price = 6), profit = 6-1 = 5.

Note that buying on day 2 and selling on day 1 is not allowed because you must buy before you sell.

Example 2:

Input: prices = [7,6,4,3,1]

Output: 0

Explanation: In this case, no transactions are done and the max profit = 0.

Constraints:

Solution

defmodule Solution do
  @spec max_profit(prices :: [integer]) :: integer
  def max_profit(prices) do
    max_profit_helper(prices, 0, :math.pow(2, 63))
  end

  defp max_profit_helper([], max_so_far, _cur_min), do: max_so_far

  defp max_profit_helper([head | tail], max_so_far, cur_min) do
    new_max_so_far = if head - cur_min > max_so_far, do: head - cur_min, else: max_so_far
    new_cur_min = if head < cur_min, do: head, else: cur_min
    max_profit_helper(tail, new_max_so_far, new_cur_min)
  end
end