Data Structures, Algorithms, & Applications in Java
Chapter 6, Exercise 29

(a)

We can use essentially the same code as used in Exercise 15 to merge two chains. We must change all occurrences of ExtendedChain to CircularList. The modified code is given below.

---

public class MergeCircularList
{
   /** merge the sorted lists a and b */
   public static CircularList merge(CircularList a, CircularList b)
   {
      // initialize iterators for a and b
      Iterator ia = a.iterator();     // iterator for a
      Iterator ib = b.iterator();     // iterator for b
      Comparable elementA = null;     // current element of a
      if (ia.hasNext())
         elementA = (Comparable) ia.next();
      Object elementB = null;         // current element of b
      if (ib.hasNext())
         elementB = ib.next();
   
      // create result list
      CircularList c = new CircularList();
   
      // do the merge
      while (elementA != null && elementB != null)
      {
         if (elementA.compareTo(elementB) <= 0)
         {// elementA goes next
            c.add(elementA);
            if (ia.hasNext())
               elementA = (Comparable) ia.next();
            else
               elementA = null;
         }
         else
         {// elementB goes next
            c.add(elementB);
            if (ib.hasNext())
               elementB = ib.next();
            else
               elementB = null;
         }
      }
   
      // add remaining elements
      if (elementA != null)
         c.add(elementA);
      if (elementB != null)
         c.add(elementB);

      // at most one of a and b can be nonempty now
      while (ia.hasNext())
         c.add(ia.next());
   
      while (ib.hasNext())
         c.add(ib.next());
   
      return c;
   }
}

(b)

In each iteration of the first while loop, we move one node right either in a or either in b. So, the complexity of this loop is O(a.size + b.size). The complexity of the second while loop is O(a.size), and that of the third loop is O(b.size). So, the overall complexity is O(a.size + b.size).

(c)

The codes and output are in the files MergeCircularList.*.