Zigzag Iterator
Given two 1d vectors, implement an iterator to return their elements alternately.
For example, given two 1d vectors:
v1 = [1, 2] v2 = [3, 4, 5, 6]
By calling next repeatedly until hasNext returns false, the order of elements returned by next should be: [1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 6].
Follow up: What if you are given k 1d vectors? How well can your code be extended to such cases?
Clarification for the follow up question - Update (2015-09-18): The "Zigzag" order is not clearly defined and is ambiguous for k > 2 cases. If "Zigzag" does not look right to you, replace "Zigzag" with "Cyclic". For example, given the following input:
[1,2,3] [4,5,6,7] [8,9]
It should return [1,4,8,2,5,9,3,6,7].
Solution
public class ZigzagIterator {
boolean flag;
Iterator<Integer> iterator1;
Iterator<Integer> iterator2;
public ZigzagIterator(List<Integer> v1, List<Integer> v2) {
iterator1 = v1.iterator();
iterator2 = v2.iterator();
flag = true;
}
public int next() {
if (hasNext()) {
if (!iterator1.hasNext()) {
return iterator2.next();
}
if (!iterator2.hasNext()) {
return iterator1.next();
}
if (flag && iterator1.hasNext()) {
flag = false;
return iterator1.next();
}
if (!flag && iterator2.hasNext()) {
flag = true;
return iterator2.next();
}
}
return Integer.MIN_VALUE;
}
public boolean hasNext() {
return iterator1.hasNext() || iterator2.hasNext();
}
}
/**
* Your ZigzagIterator object will be instantiated and called as such:
* ZigzagIterator i = new ZigzagIterator(v1, v2);
* while (i.hasNext()) v[f()] = i.next();
*/