Largest Rectangle in Histogram

Given n non-negative integers representing the histogram’s bar height where the width of each bar is 1, find the area of largest rectangle in the histogram.


Above is a histogram where width of each bar is 1, given height = [2,1,5,6,2,3].


The largest rectangle is shown in the shaded area, which has area = 10 unit.

Example:

Input: [2,1,5,6,2,3]
Output: 10

Actually, I have met this problem on the online assessment of Amazon a few days ago.

IT IS A REALLY TOUGH QUESTION FOR MY DUMB BRAIN!

class Solution:
    def largestRectangleArea(self, heights: List[int]) -> int:
        heights.append(0)
        stack = [-1]
        ans = 0
        
        for i in range(len(heights)):
            while heights[i] < heights[stack[-1]]:
                h = heights[stack.pop()]
                w = i - stack[-1] - 1
                ans = max(ans, h * w)
            stack.append(i)

        return ans