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Compute max profit from single stock trade

MetaSoftware Engineer · Technical Screen
MediumSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenCoding & Algorithms

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This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design efficient array algorithms, reason about time and space complexity constraints, and handle edge cases related to single-transaction profit calculation.

Given an array prices where prices[i] is the stock price on day i, compute the maximum profit achievable with at most one transaction (one buy and one sell, buy before sell). Return 0 if no profit is possible. Aim for O(n) time and O(

  1. extra space. Explain the algorithm, prove correctness, and analyze time/space complexity. Optionally, also return the buy and sell indices.