Well, there's basically two ways to go about this. It all depends on whether you need to keep multiple copies of the same value in the merged array. That is if you have [1,2,3] and [2,4,6] should the result be [1,2,3,4,6] or [1,2,2,3,4,6]?
If you don't mind losing the duplicates, the easiest way is something like this:
Code:
public static int[] merge(Comparable[] arg1, Comparable[] arg2)
{
//convert arrays to collections (lists)
Collection coll1 = Arrays.asList(arg1);
Collection coll2 = Arrays.asList(arg2);
//Create a SortedSet from the first collection
SortedSet sorter = new TreeSet(coll1);
//Add the second collection
sorter.addAll(coll2);
//Create an array to hold the results
int[] merged = new int[sorter.size()];
Iterator itSorted = sorter.iterator();
for (int i = 0; itSorted.hasNext(); i++) {
merged[i] = ((Integer)itSorted.next()).intValue();
}
//return the SortedSet as an array
return(merged);
}
The only complication is converting your Comparable objects into int values. The code above assumes that all elements of both arrays are actually instances of Integer. If that's not the case, you'd have to do some other conversion. This option, though easy to code, is not the most efficient.
If you want to keep the duplicates or you're overly concerned about performance, you could try something like this:
Code:
public static int[] merge(Comparable[] arg1, Comparable[] arg2)
{
Comparable[] rest;
int i1, i2, iRest, iMerged;
//Create a new array to hold the merged elements
int[] merged = new int[arg1.length + arg2.length];
i1 = i2 = iMerged = 0;
//Step through both arrays comparing elements as you go.
//When you insert one element into the merged array, step to the
// next element in that array.
while(i1 < arg1.length && i2 < arg2.length) {
if(arg1[i1].compareTo(arg2[i2]) < 0) {
merged[iMerged++] = ((Integer)arg1[i1++]).intValue();
}else {
merged[iMerged++] = ((Integer)arg2[i2++]).intValue();
}
}
//Figure out which array is done
if(i1 == arg1.length) {
iRest = i2;
rest = arg2;
} else {
iRest = i1;
rest = arg1;
}
//Now just dump in the rest of the remaining array contents into
// the new array
while (iRest < rest.length) {
merged[iMerged++] = ((Integer)rest[iRest++]).intValue();
}
return(merged);
}
I hope this helps.
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November 27th, 2001, 12:13 AM
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