Given an unsorted array return whether an increasing subsequence of length 3 exists or not in the array.

Formally the function should:

Return true if there exists i, j, k
such that arr[i] < arr[j] < arr[k] given 0 ≤ i < j < k ≤ n-1 else return false.

Note: Your algorithm should run in O(n) time complexity and O(1) space complexity.

Example 1:

Input: [1,2,3,4,5]
Output: true

Example 2:

Input: [5,4,3,2,1]
Output: false

History is always recurrent.

At the very first, I thought it is a typical dp question, and then I wrote a classical dp solution, and then I got a TLE…

This AC solution I actually checked it out from discuss board, that is really smart.

class Solution:
    def increasingTriplet(self, nums: List[int]) -> bool:
        N = len(nums)
        first = float("inf")
        second = float("inf")

        for i in range(N):
            if nums[i] < first:
                first = nums[i]
                
            elif first < nums[i] < second:
                second = nums[i]
                
            if nums[i] > second:
                return True

        return False