23. Merge k Sorted Lists Hard

Merge k sorted linked lists and return it as one sorted list. Analyze and describe its complexity.

思路：这和merge两个数组思维一样，通过一个辅助链表将比较的两个链表中较小的数存起来，最终得到结果。把每次得到的新链表存在lists的最后，并且去除lists中比较的两个链表，当lists的大小为1是，lists[0]就是我们想要的结果。

/**
 * Definition for singly-linked list.
 * struct ListNode {
 *     int val;
 *     ListNode *next;
 *     ListNode(int x) : val(x), next(NULL) {}
 * };
 */
 
 
 ListNode * merge(ListNode *a, ListNode *b) {
     ListNode *answer = new ListNode(0);
     ListNode *temp = answer;
     if (a == NULL) {
         return b;
     }
     if (b == NULL) {
         return a;
     }
     while (a != NULL && b != NULL) {
         if (a -> val < b -> val) {
             answer -> next = a;
             a = a -> next;
             answer = answer -> next;
         } else {
             answer -> next = b;
             b = b -> next;
             answer = answer -> next;
         }
     }
     while (a != NULL) {
         answer -> next = a;
         a = a -> next;
         answer = answer -> next;
     }
     while (b != NULL) {
         answer -> next = b;
         b = b -> next;
         answer = answer -> next;
     }
     return temp -> next;
 }
 
 
 
class Solution {
public:
    ListNode* mergeKLists(vector<ListNode*>& lists) {
        if (lists.size() == 1) {
            return lists[0];
        }
        if (lists.size() == 0) {
            return NULL;
        }
        lists.push_back( merge(lists[0], lists[1]) );
        lists.erase(lists.begin(), lists.begin() + 2);
        return mergeKLists(lists);
    }
};