Heap / Priority Queue
Hard
Merge K Sorted Lists
Merge k sorted linked lists into one sorted linked list.
10 min read
Solve on LeetCodeProblem Understanding
You are given an array of k linked-lists lists, each linked-list is sorted in ascending order.
Merge all the linked-lists into one sorted linked-list and return it.
Example:
- Input:
lists = [[1,4,5],[1,3,4],[2,6]] - Output:
[1,1,2,3,4,4,5,6]
Algorithm Strategy
Min-Heap Approach (O(N log k))
Instead of comparing the heads of all k lists at every step (which takes O(k)), we can use a Min-Heap.
- Initialize: Push the head node of every non-empty list into a Min-Heap.
- Iterate: While heap is not empty:
- Pop the smallest node (root) from heap.
- Add this node to our result list.
- If the popped node has a
nextnode, push thatnextnode into the heap.
- Result: The result list is sorted.
Interactive Visualization
Step 1 / 1
Empty Heap
Initializing...
1x
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