525. Contiguous Array

Posted 2020-10-09

Given a binary array, find the maximum length of a contiguous subarray with equal number of 0 and 1.

Example 1:
Input: [0,1]
Output: 2
Explanation: [0, 1] is the longest contiguous subarray with equal number of 0 and 1.
Example 2:
Input: [0,1,0]
Output: 2
Explanation: [0, 1] (or [1, 0]) is a longest contiguous subarray with equal number of 0 and 1.
Note: The length of the given binary array will not exceed 50,000.

这道题给了我们一个二进制的数组，让我们找邻近的子数组使其0和1的个数相等。对于求子数组的问题，我们需要时刻记着求累积和是一种很犀利的工具，但是这里怎么将子数组的和跟0和1的个数之间产生联系呢？我们需要用到一个trick，遇到1就加1，遇到0，就减1，这样如果某个子数组和为0，就说明0和1的个数相等，这个想法真是太叼了，不过博主木有想出来。知道了这一点，我们用一个哈希表建立子数组之和跟结尾位置的坐标之间的映射。如果某个子数组之和在哈希表里存在了，说明当前子数组减去哈希表中存的那个子数字，得到的结果是中间一段子数组之和，必然为0，说明0和1的个数相等，我们更新结果res，参见代码如下

 

public class Solution {
    public int findMaxLength(int[] nums) {
        for (int i = 0; i < nums.length; i++) {
            if (nums[i] == 0) nums[i] = -1;
        }
        
        Map<Integer, Integer> sumToIndex = new HashMap<>();
        sumToIndex.put(0, -1);
        int sum = 0, max = 0;
        
        for (int i = 0; i < nums.length; i++) {
            sum += nums[i];
            if (sumToIndex.containsKey(sum)) {
                max = Math.max(max, i - sumToIndex.get(sum));
            }
            else {
                sumToIndex.put(sum, i);
            }
        }
        
        return max;
    }
}