leetcode 160 Intersection of Two Linked Lists

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

Notes:

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

给定两个链表，计算其第一个公共节点。

直观的方法是暴力遍历，对于链表A中的每一节点，在链表B中都遍历一遍，算法复杂度为O(m*n)，代码如下：

    ListNode *getIntersectionNode(ListNode *headA, ListNode *headB) {
        ListNode *ret = nullptr;
        if(!headA || !headB)
            return ret;
        ListNode *p_a = headA;
        while(p_a)
        {
            ListNode *p_b = headB;
            while(p_b)
            {
                if(p_a == p_b)
                {
                    ret = p_a;
                    return ret;
                }
                p_b = p_b->next;
            }
            p_a = p_a->next;
        }
        return ret;
    }

对于一个有追求的刷题者，这种解法显然是不合适的。在剑指offer中，分析了几种思路，一种是借助辅助栈来保存所有链表节点，然后根据出栈时进行判断，时间复杂度和空间复杂度都是O(m + n)。我们对链表进行深入分析后可以发现，若有相同节点，则以后的节点都相同，因此可先计算出链表的长度，让较长的那个链表先走长度差步，这样判断以后的节点，即可找出相同的节点，代码如下：

ListNode *getIntersectionNode(ListNode *headA, ListNode *headB) {
        unsigned int len1 = getListLength(headA);
        unsigned int len2 = getListLength(headB);
        int len_diff = len1 - len2;
        ListNode *p_a = headA, *p_b = headB;
        if(len_diff > 0)
        {
            while(len_diff-- > 0)
            {
                p_a = p_a->next;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            while(len_diff++ < 0)
            {
                p_b = p_b->next;
            }
        }
        
        while(p_a && p_b)
        {
            if(p_a == p_b)
                return p_a;
            else
            {
                p_a = p_a->next;
                p_b = p_b->next;
            }
        }
        
        return nullptr;
    }
    
    unsigned int getListLength(ListNode *head)
    {
        unsigned int ret = 0;
        ListNode *p = head;
        while(p)
        {
            ++ret;
            p = p->next;
        }
        return ret;
    }