Given an unsorted array of integers, find the length of longest continuous increasing subsequence (subarray).
Example 1:
Input: [1,3,5,4,7] Output: 3 Explanation: The longest continuous increasing subsequence is [1,3,5], its length is 3. Even though [1,3,5,7] is also an increasing subsequence, it's not a continuous one where 5 and 7 are separated by 4.
Example 2:
Input: [2,2,2,2,2] Output: 1 Explanation: The longest continuous increasing subsequence is [2], its length is 1.
Note: Length of the array will not exceed 10,000.
Intuition and Algorithm
Every (continuous) increasing subsequence is disjoint, and the boundary of each such subsequence occurs whenever nums[i-1] >= nums[i]. When it does, it marks the start of a new increasing subsequence at nums[i], and we store such i in the variable anchor.
For example, if nums = [7, 8, 9, 1, 2, 3], then anchor starts at 0 (nums[anchor] = 7) and gets set again to anchor = 3 (nums[anchor] = 1). Regardless of the value of anchor, we record a candidate answer of i - anchor + 1, the length of the subarray nums[anchor], nums[anchor+1], ..., nums[i]; and our answer gets updated appropriately.
Complexity Analysis
Time Complexity: , where is the length of nums. We perform one loop through nums.
Space Complexity: , the space used by anchor and ans.
Analysis written by: @awice.