how to find maximum sum of the contiguous elements in an array?

Question

consider an example :
if an array is: 2 -1 2 4 6 -5
then maximum sum of contiguous array is 13, from index 0 to index 4
constraints: complexity must not be greater than O(n).

Answer 1

You can use Kadane’s Algorithm:

Initialize:
    max_so_far = 0
    max_ending_here = 0

Loop for each element of the array
  (a) max_ending_here = max_ending_here + a[i]
  (b) if(max_ending_here < 0)
            max_ending_here = 0
  (c) if(max_so_far < max_ending_here)
            max_so_far = max_ending_here
return max_so_far 

Sample Code

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;

int maxSubArraySum(int a[], int size)
{
    int max_so_far = 0, max_ending_here = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
    {
        max_ending_here = max_ending_here + a[i];
        if (max_ending_here < 0)
            max_ending_here = 0;
        if (max_so_far < max_ending_here)
            max_so_far = max_ending_here;
    }
    return max_so_far;
}

int main()
{
    int a[] = {2, -1, 2, 4, 6, -5};
    int n = sizeof(a)/sizeof(a[0]);
    int max_sum = maxSubArraySum(a, n);
    cout << "Maximum contiguous sum is \n" << max_sum;
    return 0;
}

Credit: http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/largest-sum-contiguous-subarray/