134. Gas Station(数学定理依赖题)

There are N gas stations along a circular route, where the amount of gas at station i is gas[i].

You have a car with an unlimited gas tank and it costs cost[i] of gas to travel from station i to its next station (i+1). You begin the journey with an empty tank at one of the gas stations.

Return the starting gas station's index if you can travel around the circuit once in the clockwise direction, otherwise return -1.

Note:

• If there exists a solution, it is guaranteed to be unique.
• Both input arrays are non-empty and have the same length.
• Each element in the input arrays is a non-negative integer.

Example 1:

Input:
gas  = [1,2,3,4,5]
cost = [3,4,5,1,2]

Output: 3

Explanation:
Start at station 3 (index 3) and fill up with 4 unit of gas. Your tank = 0 + 4 = 4
Travel to station 4. Your tank = 4 - 1 + 5 = 8
Travel to station 0. Your tank = 8 - 2 + 1 = 7
Travel to station 1. Your tank = 7 - 3 + 2 = 6
Travel to station 2. Your tank = 6 - 4 + 3 = 5
Travel to station 3. The cost is 5. Your gas is just enough to travel back to station 3.
Therefore, return 3 as the starting index.

Example 2:

Input:
gas  = [2,3,4]
cost = [3,4,3]

Output: -1

Explanation:
You can't start at station 0 or 1, as there is not enough gas to travel to the next station.
Let's start at station 2 and fill up with 4 unit of gas. Your tank = 0 + 4 = 4
Travel to station 0. Your tank = 4 - 3 + 2 = 3
Travel to station 1. Your tank = 3 - 3 + 3 = 3
You cannot travel back to station 2, as it requires 4 unit of gas but you only have 3.
Therefore, you can't travel around the circuit once no matter where you start.

思路1：

对于站点 i，我们把 gas[i] - cost[i] 当作整体考虑，我们用diff[i] = gas[i] - cost[i] 表示从当前站点出发，到下一个站点后剩余的油量。

题目就是需要找出这么一个点，从这个点出发，diff的累加值能达到峰值。

这道题就是求diff[]数组上的 和最大连续子序列，这个最大子序列的起始点就是车的出发点！如果车从这儿开都不能做到油箱不空，那么这个题目就该返回-1了。

因此，这道题转化成了 求循环数组的最大子序列问题。

思路2：

基于一个数学定理：

如果一个数组的总和非负，那么一定可以找到一个起始位置，从他开始绕数组一圈，累加和一直都是非负的

有了这个定理，判断到底是否存在这样的解非常容易，只需要把全部的油耗情况计算出来看看是否大于等于0即可。

那么如何求开始位置在哪？

注意到这样一个现象：

1. 假如从位置i开始，i+1，i+2...，一路开过来一路油箱都没有空。说明什么？说明从i到i+1，i+2，...肯定是正积累。
2. 现在突然发现开往位置j时油箱空了。这说明什么？说明从位置i开始没法走完全程(废话)。那么，我们要从位置i+1开始重新尝试吗？不需要！为什么？因为前面已经知道，位置i肯定是正积累，那么，如果从位置i+1开始走更加没法走完全程了，因为没有位置i的正积累了。同理，也不用从i+2，i+3，...开始尝试。所以我们可以放心地从位置j+1开始尝试。

 class Solution {
     public int canCompleteCircuit(int[] gas, int[] cost) {
         int diff=0;
         for(int i=0;i<gas.length;i++)
             diff+=gas[i]-cost[i];
         if(diff<0) return -1;

         int start =0;
         int sum = 0;
         for(int i =0;i<gas.length;i++){
             if(sum<0){
                 sum = gas[i]-cost[i];
                 start = i;
             }
             else
                 sum+=gas[i]-cost[i];
         }
         return start;
     }
 }