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Computer Science Algorithms: Sorting and Searching Sorting Algorithms Merge Sort

Luc Charbonneau
Luc Charbonneau
1,789 Points
Posted by Luc Charbonneau
Luc Charbonneau
1,789 Points

Can one of the lists have more than one value by the end of the merge loop. Jay Keeps saying "a" value. Incorrect?

At around 3:30 Jay says “The one with a value left will add that value.” shouldn’t he have said “the one with values left will add its values”? To me it looks like one of the lists can have more than one value by the end of the loop.

1 Answer

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points
Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

Jay's right here. By the time the while loop finishes, either left_values or right_values will have a singe value left within, and the other one won't. Remember that when the loop began, they both had the same number of values (or potentially one might have 1 more value than the other if values had an odd number of items). Regardless, the loop goes over both left_values and right_values and takes 1 object at a time from each until one of them has no values left. The end result is that the condition will fail and the loop will stop once one of the arrays run out of contents, and the other will be guaranteed to have exactly 1 value left