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Reverse Lists, Add them, Reverse the sum and return the sum as a List
I came around this problem while solving questions on leetcode. This is a very good problem of linked lists. Basically the problem says: You are given two linked lists, you have to add those lists by reversing them and again reverse your addition output and return it as a linked list 🤔. I will not go solving this problem in context of time complexity but rather I will try to simplify it to the most basic level.
I'm using Java to solve this problem. I will be solving it from the scratch.
- 1. First let's create a node for the linked list.
public class Node {
int data;
Node next;
public Node(int data) {
this.data = data;
next = null;
}
}
- 2. Function to add Nodes to the linked list:
public Node head = null;
public Node tail = null;
public void addNode(int data) {
Node newNode = new Node(data);
if (head == null) {
head = newNode;
tail = newNode;
} else {
tail.next = newNode;
tail = newNode;
}
}
- 3. Function to display nodes in the list.
public void display() throws IllegalStateException {
Node current = head;
if (head == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("Your List is empty");
}
while (current != null) {
System.out.println(current.data);
current = current.next;
}
}
The top 3 blocks of codes were normal implementation of the linked list and displaying them using the display function.
Now, the function to reverse the linked list:
- 4. Reversing the linked list iteratively (you can do that recursively also)
public Node reverse(Node start) throws IllegalStateException {
if (start == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("List is empty");
}
Node current = start;
Node prev = null;
while (current != null) {
Node next = current.next;
current.next = prev;
prev = current;
current = next;
}
return prev;
}
- 5. The most important step is to add the values from the list to a StringBuilder and convert it to integer and return it. We'll use this value in the main function. Workaround: To add the values easily that's why we are doing this extra step.
public static int arr(Node start) throws IllegalStateException {
Node current = start;
if (start == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("Your List is empty");
}
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while (current != null) {
sb.append(current.data);
current = current.next;
}
String str = sb.toString();
int x = Integer.parseInt(str);
return x; // string converted to int
}
- 6. Finally the main method:
public static void main(String[] args) {
// creating two demo lists
AddTwoNumbers list1 = new AddTwoNumbers();
list1.addNode(1);
list1.addNode(1);
list1.addNode(6);
AddTwoNumbers list2 = new AddTwoNumbers();
list2.addNode(1);
list2.addNode(9);
list2.addNode(2);
// reversing the lists
Node x1 = list1.reverse(list1.head);
Node x2 = list2.reverse(list2.head);
// getting the returned integer representation of the lists
int y1 = arr(x1);
int y2 = arr(x2);
// adding both the values that's why we did the 5th step to simplify this summing process
int sum = y1 + y2;
// convert again to string builder so that we can reverse it easily
StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder();
StringBuilder output = str.append(sum).reverse();
// create a new list that will be returned
AddTwoNumbers finalList = new AddTwoNumbers();
// pass the values to the list
for (int i = 0; i < output.length(); i++) {
int x =Integer.parseInt(String.valueOf(output.charAt(i)));
finalList.addNode(x);
}
// and, finally display it
finalList.display();
}
I know this solution went too long but this is a good workaround of solving this problem easily.
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