Question

Homework: Looking for better strategy, or approach rather than complete code.

I’v got two arrayLists of integers under two conditions:

1. the first list is bigger than the second
2. the second list is larger than the first

My goal was to interleave elements of list2, into list1 under both conditions. I’ve created a method that does this, but I feel like I could be doing something better.

Here is the expected result for condition 1. Note that after the elements of list2 are exhausted, we leave the elements of list1 in place:

list1: [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70]
list2: [4, 5, 6, 7]
Combined: [10, 4, 20, 5, 30, 6, 40, 7, 50, 60, 70]

Here is the expected result for condition 2. Since list2 has more elements, we append these elements to list1 after list1 is exhausted:

list1: [10, 20, 30, 40]
list2: [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]
Combined: [10, 4, 20, 5, 30, 6, 40, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]

My code uses an if-else statement to process both conditions. I then use an iterator to go through elements of list2 and insert them in list1.

public static void main(String[] Args)
{
    ArrayList<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    numbers.add(10);
    numbers.add(20);
    numbers.add(30);
    numbers.add(40);
    //numbers.add(50);
    //numbers.add(60);
    //numbers.add(70);

    ArrayList<Integer> numbers2 = new ArrayList<Integer>();

    numbers2.add(4);
    numbers2.add(5);
    numbers2.add(6);
    numbers2.add(7);
    numbers2.add(8);
    numbers2.add(9);
    numbers2.add(10);
    numbers2.add(11);

    System.out.println("list1: " + numbers);
    System.out.println("list2: " + numbers2);

    interleave(numbers, numbers2);

    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("Combined: " + numbers);
}

public static void interleave(ArrayList<Integer> list1, ArrayList<Integer> list2)
{
    //obtain an iterator for the collection
    Iterator<Integer> itr2 = list2.iterator();

    //loop counter
    int count = 1;

    //handle based on initial size of lists
    if(list1.size() >= list2.size())
    {
       //loop through the first array and add elements from list 2 after each element
       while(itr2.hasNext())
       {
           //insert elements from list2
           list1.add(count, itr2.next());

           //make sure elements are getting added at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc
           count = count + 2;
       }
    }
    else if(list1.size() < list2.size())
    {
       //loop through the first array and add elements from list 2 after each element
       while(itr2.hasNext())
       {
           if(count <= list1.size())
           {
               //insert elements from list2
               list1.add(count, itr2.next());

               //make sure elements are getting added at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc
               count = count + 2;
           }
           else
           {
               //fill in the remainder of the elements from list2 to list1
               list1.add(itr2.next());
           }
       }
    }
}

Answer 1

Do you like this solution?

public static void main(final String[] args) {
    ArrayList<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    numbers.add(10); numbers.add(20); numbers.add(30); numbers.add(40);
    //numbers.add(50); numbers.add(60); numbers.add(70);

    ArrayList<Integer> numbers2 = new ArrayList<Integer>();
    numbers2.add(4); numbers2.add(5); numbers2.add(6); numbers2.add(7);
    numbers2.add(8); numbers2.add(9); numbers2.add(10); numbers2.add(11);

    System.out.println("list1: " + numbers);
    System.out.println("list2: " + numbers2);
    List<Integer> interleaved = interleave(numbers, numbers2);

    System.out.println("\nCombined: " + interleaved);
}

public static List<Integer> interleave(
    final List<Integer> list1,
    final List<Integer> list2
) {
    List<Integer> result
        = new ArrayList<Integer>(list1.size() + list2.size());

    Iterator<Integer> it1 = list1.iterator();
    Iterator<Integer> it2 = list2.iterator();
    while (it1.hasNext() || it2.hasNext()) {
        if (it1.hasNext()) {
            result.add(it1.next());
        }
        if (it2.hasNext()) {
            result.add(it2.next());
        }
    }
    return result;
}