Interview Question: Merge two sorted singly linked lists without creating new nodes

Question

This is a programming question asked during a written test for an interview. \"You have two singly linked lists that are already sorted, you have to merge them and return a

Answer 1

Iteration can be done as below. Complexity = O(n)

public static LLNode mergeSortedListIteration(LLNode nodeA, LLNode nodeB) {
    LLNode mergedNode ;
    LLNode tempNode ;      

    if (nodeA == null) {
        return nodeB;
      } 
      if (nodeB == null) {
        return nodeA;
      }     


    if ( nodeA.getData() < nodeB.getData())
    {
        mergedNode = nodeA;
        nodeA = nodeA.getNext();
    }
    else
    {
        mergedNode = nodeB;
        nodeB = nodeB.getNext();
    }

    tempNode = mergedNode; 

    while (nodeA != null && nodeB != null)
    {           

        if ( nodeA.getData() < nodeB.getData())
        {               
            mergedNode.setNext(nodeA);
            nodeA = nodeA.getNext();
        }
        else
        {
            mergedNode.setNext(nodeB);
            nodeB = nodeB.getNext();                
        }       
        mergedNode = mergedNode.getNext();
    }

    if (nodeA != null)
    {
        mergedNode.setNext(nodeA);
    }

    if (nodeB != null)
    {
        mergedNode.setNext(nodeB);
    }       
    return tempNode;
}