How to combine overlapping time ranges (time ranges union)

Question

I have an array with several time ranges inside:

[Tue, 24 May 2011 08:00:00 CEST +02:00..Tue, 24 May 2011 13:00:00 CEST +02:00,
 Tue, 24 May 2011 16:30:00 CE         


        

Answer 1

The solution, offered by @wayne-conrad is a very good one. I implemented it for a problem, I stumbled upon. Then I implemented an iterative version and benchmarked the two. It appears, the iterative version is quicker. Note: I use ActiveSupport for Range#overlaps? and the time helpers, but it is trivial to implement a pure-Ruby version.

require 'active_support/all'

module RangesUnifier
  extend self

  # ranges is an array of ranges, e.g. [1..5, 2..6] 
  def iterative_call(ranges)
    ranges.sort_by(&:begin).reduce([ranges.first]) do |merged_ranges, range|
      if merged_ranges.last.overlaps?(range)
        merged_ranges[0...-1] << merge_ranges(merged_ranges.last, range)
      else
        merged_ranges << range
      end
    end
  end

  def recursive_call(ranges)
    return ranges if ranges.size == 1

    if ranges[0].overlaps?(ranges[1])
      recursive_call [merge_ranges(ranges[0], ranges[1]), *ranges[2..-1]]
    else
      [ranges[0], *recursive_call(ranges[1..-1])]
    end
  end

  def merge_ranges(a, b)
    [a.begin, b.begin].min..[a.end, b.end].max
  end
end

five_hours_ago = 5.hours.ago
four_hours_ago = 4.hours.ago
three_hours_ago = 3.hours.ago
two_hours_ago = 2.hours.ago
one_hour_ago = 1.hour.ago
one_hour_from_now = 1.hour.from_now
two_hours_from_now = 2.hours.from_now
three_hours_from_now = 3.hours.from_now
four_hours_from_now = 4.hours.from_now
five_hours_from_now = 5.hours.from_now

input = [
  five_hours_ago..four_hours_ago,
  three_hours_ago..two_hours_from_now,
  one_hour_ago..one_hour_from_now,
  one_hour_from_now..three_hours_from_now,
  four_hours_from_now..five_hours_from_now
]

RangesUnifier.iterative_call(input) 
#=> [
# 2017-08-21 12:50:50 +0300..2017-08-21 13:50:50 +0300, 
# 2017-08-21 14:50:50 +0300..2017-08-21 20:50:50 +0300, 
# 2017-08-21 21:50:50 +0300..2017-08-21 22:50:50 +0300
# ]

RangesUnifier.recursive_call(input)
#=> [
# 2017-08-21 12:50:50 +0300..2017-08-21 13:50:50 +0300, 
# 2017-08-21 14:50:50 +0300..2017-08-21 20:50:50 +0300, 
# 2017-08-21 21:50:50 +0300..2017-08-21 22:50:50 +0300
# ]

n = 100_000    

Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report('iterative') { n.times { RangesUnifier.iterative_call(input) } }
  x.report('recursive') { n.times { RangesUnifier.recursive_call(input) } }
end

# =>
#        user     system      total        real
# iterative  0.970000   0.000000   0.970000 (  0.979549)
# recursive  0.540000   0.010000   0.550000 (  0.546755)