Merge two lists

Question

I am looking to merge 2 lists in F# in a purely functional way. I am having a hard time understanding the syntax.

Let say I have a tuple ([5;3;8],[2;9;4])

Answer 1

From the OP it's not clear what should happen if the lists have different lengths, but here's a generic, tail-recursive implementation that fully consumes both lists:

// 'a list -> 'a list -> 'a list
let interleave xs ys =
    let rec imp xs ys acc =
        match xs, ys with
        |    [],    [] -> acc
        | x::xs,    [] -> imp xs [] (x::acc)
        |    [], y::ys -> imp [] ys (y::acc)
        | x::xs, y::ys -> imp xs ys (y::x::acc)
    imp xs ys [] |> List.rev

Examples:

> interleave [5;3;8] [2;9;4];;
val it : int list = [5; 2; 3; 9; 8; 4]
> interleave [] [1..3];;
val it : int list = [1; 2; 3]
> interleave [1..3] [42];;
val it : int list = [1; 42; 2; 3]
> interleave [1..3] [42;1337];;
val it : int list = [1; 42; 2; 1337; 3]
> interleave [42; 1337] [1..3];;
val it : int list = [42; 1; 1337; 2; 3]