Leetcode - 1768 Merge Two Strings Alternately in Python - #coding #python #leetcode

Welcome to Fast Track Coding! In this video, we tackle a popular coding challenge: merging two strings alternately. We'll walk through the Python code that solves this problem step-by-step. The goal is to create a new string by taking characters from two input strings alternately until one of the strings is exhausted, and then appending the remaining characters from the longer string. We’ll also discuss the time complexity of the solution, helping you understand the efficiency of our approach. Perfect for beginners and anyone looking to improve their coding skills! Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more coding tutorials!

Leet Code :

Here’s a breakdown of the code provided:

Class Definition: The Solution class is defined to encapsulate the mergeAlternately method.

Method Definition: The method mergeAlternately takes two strings, word1 and word2, as inputs.

Calculate Lengths: It computes the lengths of the two input strings and stores them in l1 and l2.

Initialize Merge List: An empty list called merge is initialized. This will hold the characters of the merged string.

Iterate Through the Shortest String: A for loop runs from 0 to the length of the shorter string (using min(l1, l2)). In each iteration:

The current character from word1 (word1[i]) is appended to the merge list.
The current character from word2 (word2[i]) is also appended to the merge list.
Append Remaining Characters: After the loop, any remaining characters from both strings are appended to the merge list:

Join and Return: Finally, return "".join(merge) combines all elements in the merge list into a single string and returns it.

Time Complexity
The time complexity of this solution is O(n + m), where n is the length of word1 and m is the length of word2. This is because:

The loop runs min(n, m) times to merge characters alternately.
The final joining of the list into a string takes O(n + m) time because it processes every character from both strings.
Overall, this implementation is efficient, as it processes each character in the input strings exactly once.