Container With Most Water

Asked byAmazonMicrosoftAdobeFacebookGoogleApple

Problem

Given an array of heights where each value represents a vertical line at that index, find two lines that together with the x-axis form a container holding the maximum amount of water, and return that maximum area.

Examples

Example 1

Input:height = [1,8,6,2,5,4,8,3,7]

Output:49

Example 2

Input:height = [1,1]

Output:1

Constraints

2 <= height.length <= 10^5

Solve it in the editor. Sign in free to run your Python or JavaScript against test cases, get a verdict, and track your attempts.

Solve on FeatCode →

How to approach it: the Two Pointers pattern

Two indices move through a sorted (or sortable) structure — often from opposite ends or at different speeds — to avoid the nested loops a brute-force scan would need.

Look for this pattern when

The input is sorted, or can be sorted without losing information you need.
You're looking for a pair, triplet, or partition that satisfies a sum or comparison condition.
You need to compare values from both ends of a sequence (e.g. palindrome checks).

Read the full Two Pointers guide →

Video walkthroughs

Original problem on LeetCode ↗