和大神们学习每天一题(leetcode)-Intersection of Two Linked Lists

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 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.

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

There are many solutions to this problem:

• Brute-force solution (O(mn) running time, O(1) memory):

  For each node ai in list A, traverse the entire list B and check if any node in list B coincides with ai.

• Hashset solution (O(n+m) running time, O(n) or O(m) memory):

  Traverse list A and store the address / reference to each node in a hash set. Then check every node bi in list B: if bi appears in the hash set, then bi is the intersection node.

• Two pointer solution (O(n+m) running time, O(1) memory):
  • Maintain two pointers pA and pB initialized at the head of A and B, respectively. Then let them both traverse through the lists, one node at a time.
  • When pA reaches the end of a list, then redirect it to the head of B (yes, B, that's right.); similarly when pB reaches the end of a list, redirect it the head of A.
  • If at any point pA meets pB, then pA/pB is the intersection node.
  • To see why the above trick would work, consider the following two lists: A = {1,3,5,7,9,11} and B = {2,4,9,11}, which are intersected at node '9'. Since B.length (=4) < A.length (=6), pB would reach the end of the merged list first, because pB traverses exactly 2 nodes less than pA does. By redirecting pB to head A, and pA to head B, we now ask pB to travel exactly 2 more nodes than pA would. So in the second iteration, they are guaranteed to reach the intersection node at the same time.
  • If two lists have intersection, then their last nodes must be the same one. So when pA/pB reaches the end of a list, record the last element of A/B respectively. If the two last elements are not the same one, then the two lists have no intersections.

class Solution 
{
public:
	ListNode *getIntersectionNode(ListNode *headA, ListNode *headB) //双指针法
	{
		int nLenA = 1, nLenB = 1;
		if (headA == NULL || headB == NULL)
			return NULL;
		ListNode *PointA = headA, *PointB = headB;
		while (PointA->next != NULL)//遍历A链表，计算链表长度
		{
			nLenA++;
			PointA = PointA->next;
		}
		while (PointB->next != NULL)//遍历B链表，计算链表长度
		{
			nLenB++;
			PointB = PointB->next;
		}
		PointA = headA;
		PointB = headB;
		if (nLenA >= nLenB)
		{
			for (int nTemp = 0; nTemp < nLenA - nLenB; nTemp++)
			{
				PointA = PointA->next;
			}
			for (int nTemp = 0; nTemp < nLenB; nTemp++)
			{
				if (PointA == PointB)
				{
					return PointA;
				}
				PointA = PointA->next;
				PointB = PointB->next;
			}
			return NULL;
		}
		else
		{
			for (int nTemp = 0; nTemp < nLenB - nLenA; nTemp++)
			{
				PointB = PointB->next;
			}
			for (int nTemp = 0; nTemp < nLenA; nTemp++)
			{
				if (PointA == PointB)
				{
					return PointA;
				}
				PointA = PointA->next;
				PointB = PointB->next;
			}
			return NULL;
		}
	}
};