160. 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.

一道比较经典的问题 求链表交点

如果没有空间复杂度要求的话 可以这样做:

遍历其中一个链表 放入set 遍历第二个 set.contains = true 返回即可

但是要求时间复杂度是O(1) solution比较trick 如下

Two Pointers

• 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.

Complexity Analysis

• Time complexity : $O(m+n)$.
• Space complexity : $O(1)$.

public ListNode getIntersectionNode(ListNode headA, ListNode headB) {
    //boundary check
    if(headA == null || headB == null) return null;
    
    ListNode a = headA;
    ListNode b = headB;
    
    //if a & b have different len, then we will stop the loop after second iteration
    while( a != b){
        //for the end of first iteration, we just reset the pointer to the head of another linkedlist
        a = a == null? headB : a.next;
        b = b == null? headA : b.next;    
    }
    
    return a;
}

a,b链表的遍历过程会变为这样:

a1->a2->c1->c2->c3->b1->b2->b3->c1->c2->c3

b1->b2->b3->c1->c2->c3->a1->a2->c1->c2->c3

在第二个c1处汇合

之前纠结于如果没有节点 会不会陷入死循环 实际上是不会的 因为最后会a==b==null 返回null