160. Intersection of Two Linked Lists

问题描述

Write a program to find the node at which the intersection of two singly linked lists begins.

For example, the following two linked lists:

A: a1 → a2
↘
c1 → c2 → c3
↗
B: b1 → b2 → b3
begin to intersect at node c1.

Notes:

• If the two linked lists have no intersection at all, return null. The
• linked lists must retain their original structure after the function
• You may assume there are no cycles anywhere in the entire
• Your code should preferably run in O(n) time and
  use only O(1) memory.

Credits:
Special thanks to @stellari for adding this problem and creating all test cases.

题目链接：

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思路分析

检测两个链表是否有重合的结点，如果有的话就返回第一个相交的点。

若两链表任一为空则返回null；开始遍历两条链表，因为两条链表长度可能不同，因此我们可设置两条链表结束之后链至另一条的头上，这样两条链表如果有重合的地方就可以重合在一起了（很巧妙，一开始没有想到）

/**
 * Definition for singly-linked list.
 * struct ListNode {
 *     int val;
 *     ListNode *next;
 *     ListNode(int x) : val(x), next(NULL) {}
 * };
 */
class Solution {
public:
    ListNode *getIntersectionNode(ListNode *headA, ListNode *headB) {
        ListNode *p1 = headA;
        ListNode *p2 = headB;
        if(p1 == NULL || p2 == NULL)
            return NULL;
        while(p1 != NULL && p2 != NULL && p1 != p2){
            p1 = p1->next;
            p2 = p2->next;
            if(p1 == p2)
                return p1;
            if(p1 == NULL)
                p1 = headB;
            if(p2 == NULL)
                p2 = headA;  
        }
            return p1;
    }
};

时间复杂度：O(m + n)

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反思

当判断完头节点之后就可以直接next node了，因为头节点相同的话两条链表就是相同的了。然后在判断是否相同，从这开始返回任意指针P1 || P2都可以了。（null 或重合点）