A question from Morgan Stanley's interview

Question

There is a array filled with char elements, can you suggest a most efficient way to find the max length of continuous white space?

Answer 1

Scan the array from left to right, keep a count of white space. When you reach a non-whitespace character, check that count against the current max; if it's higher, it becomes the new max. Skip forwards this max number in the array - if it is not whitespace you know the interval cannot contain the max whitespace. Otherwise search backwards to where whitespace started - find that set your count and continue from where you had previously skipped to.

I believe worst case performance of this would be O(n) and best case would be O(sqrt(n)) for the case where there is a sqrt(n) start of whitespace followed by non-whitespace on every skip point (causing repeated skipping to the end of the array).

Answer 2

scan the array left to right, keep a count of white space. When you reach a non-whitespace character, check that count against the current max; if it's higher, it becomes the new max. Set the count back to zero, continue scanning. This is O(n) and you can't really do better because you have to touch each element at least once.