713 Subarray Product Less Than K

This problem gives the impression of being difficult but is actually pretty chill. 🗿

The test cases make it look like you need some complex backtracking stuff, but it’s just sliding window.

We move over the window and once product reaches over $k$, we start shrinking from the $left$ pointer. This code snippet is very common in dynamic sliding window patterns, you would see a lot of them.

Code:

Python3

class Solution:
    def numSubarrayProductLessThanK(self, nums: List[int], k: int) -> int:
        left = 0
        prod = 1
        res = 0
        for right, n in enumerate(nums):
            prod *= n
 
            # common sliding window code snippet
            while prod >= k and left <= right:
                prod /= nums[left]
                left += 1
 
            res += right - left + 1
 
        return res

Big O Analysis

• Runtime The runtime complexity here is $O(N)$ since we are visiting all elements once.
• Memory The memory usage is $O(1)$.

— A

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