A subarray is a portion of an array that consists of consecutive elements from the original array.
Subarray
Characteristics of a Subarray:
- Contiguity: The elements in a subarray are contiguous, meaning they are consecutive and in order in the original array.
- Length: The length of a subarray can be any positive integer, from 1 to the length of the original array.
- Element Selection: The elements in a subarray are selected from the original array.
Difference between Subarray and subsequence:
| Subarray | Subsequence |
|---|---|
| A sequence that is formed by picking any number of consecutive elements from an array | Sequence that is formed by deleting any number of elements from any position of the array |
| Elements are consecutive and in the same order as in the original array | Not necessarily consecutive but in the same order as in the original sequence |
| All subarrays are also a subsequence of the array | Not all subsequences are subarrays. |
| The number of possible subarrays is less | The number of possible subsequences is more |
Applications of Subarray:
- Array Processing: Subarrays can be used to perform operations on smaller chunks of data stored in an array, rather than processing the entire array at once. This can be more efficient for large arrays and can also be useful for processing arrays in parallel.
- String Processing: In string processing, subarrays can be used to find substrings or to perform operations on substrings, such as searching, pattern matching, and manipulation.
- Application of maximum subarray sum: This problem has several applications in fields like “genomic sequence analysis” and “computer vision”.