Merge Strings Alternately | Leetcode 1768 | Python | Explained | Simple

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Welcome back, everyone! In today's video, we're going to tackle the "Merge Strings Alternately" problem from LeetCode (Problem 1768). This problem is a great exercise in string manipulation and will help you sharpen your skills in working with strings in Python. We'll walk through the problem step-by-step and explore two efficient solutions to help you master this concept.

📝 Problem Description:
You are given two strings, word1 and word2. You need to merge these two strings by alternating their characters, starting with the first character of word1. If one string is longer than the other, append the additional characters of the longer string at the end of the merged string.

🔍 Example:
Input:

makefile
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word1 = "abc"
word2 = "pqr"
Output:

arduino
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"apbqcr"
🚀 Solution Overview:
We'll cover two approaches to solve this problem:

Iterative Merge Approach: This approach involves iterating through both strings simultaneously and merging their characters alternately. If one string is longer, we simply append the remaining characters of the longer string to the result.

List-Based Merge Approach: In this approach, we use a list to collect characters from both strings alternately, and then convert the list to a string at the end. This method is efficient and easy to understand.

🧩 Approach 1: Iterative Merge Approach
This method is straightforward. We iterate through the characters of both strings simultaneously and build the merged string by appending characters alternately. If one string is longer, the remaining characters are added directly to the end of the result. I'll walk you through the implementation in Python.

🧩 Approach 2: List-Based Merge Approach
In this approach, we'll use a list to gather characters from both strings. After collecting all characters, we'll join the list into a final string. This approach is simple and leverages Python's efficient list operations. I'll also provide a step-by-step implementation in Python.

💡 Key Concepts:

String manipulation
Iterative methods
Python list operations
📚 What You'll Learn:
By the end of this video, you'll understand:

How to efficiently merge two strings by alternating their characters.
Two different methods to solve the problem, enhancing your understanding of string manipulation in Python.
🔧 Code Implementation:
I'll provide the full Python code for both approaches, and we'll go through each line together to ensure you understand the logic and flow.

💬 Join the Discussion:
If you have any questions or need further clarifications, feel free to leave a comment below. I'm always happy to interact with you and help out where I can.

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