Practice/LinkedIn/Leetcode 21. Merge Two Sorted Lists

Leetcode 21. Merge Two Sorted Lists

CodingMust

Problem

You are given two sorted arrays of integers in ascending order. Your task is to merge these two arrays into a single sorted array that contains all elements from both input arrays while maintaining the ascending order.

Both input arrays are already sorted, and your solution should take advantage of this property to efficiently combine them.

Requirements

1. Merge both arrays into a single sorted array
2. Maintain ascending order in the result
3. Include all elements from both input arrays (duplicates should be preserved)
4. Handle edge cases where one or both arrays are empty

Constraints

• 0 ≤ list1.length, list2.length ≤ 50
• -100 ≤ list1[i], list2[i] ≤ 100
• Both list1 and list2 are sorted in ascending order
• Aim for O(n + m) time complexity where n and m are the lengths of the two arrays

Examples

Example 1:

Input: list1 = [1, 2, 4], list2 = [1, 3, 4] Output: [1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4] Explanation: Merging the two sorted arrays results in [1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4]

Example 2:

Input: list1 = [], list2 = [0] Output: [0] Explanation: When one array is empty, the result is the other array

Example 3:

Input: list1 = [], list2 = [] Output: [] Explanation: Two empty arrays produce an empty result

Example 4:

Input: list1 = [1, 3, 5], list2 = [2, 4, 6] Output: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Explanation: Elements are interleaved to maintain sorted order