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Insert Interval

You are given an array of non-overlapping intervals intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi] represent the start and the end of the ith interval and intervals is sorted in ascending order by starti. You are also given an interval newInterval = [start, end] that represents the start and end of another interval.

Insert newInterval into intervals such that intervals is still sorted in ascending order by starti and intervals still does not have any overlapping intervals (merge overlapping intervals if necessary).

Return intervals after the insertion.

Note that you don't need to modify intervals in-place. You can make a new array and return it.

public List<Interval> insert(List<Interval> intervals, Interval newInterval) {
    List<Interval> result = new LinkedList<>();
    int i = 0;
    // add all the intervals ending before newInterval starts
    while (i < intervals.size() && intervals.get(i).end < newInterval.start)
        result.add(intervals.get(i++));
    // merge all overlapping intervals to one considering newInterval
    while (i < intervals.size() && intervals.get(i).start <= newInterval.end) {
        newInterval = new Interval( // we could mutate newInterval here also
                Math.min(newInterval.start, intervals.get(i).start),
                Math.max(newInterval.end, intervals.get(i).end));
        i++;
    }
    result.add(newInterval); // add the union of intervals we got
    // add all the rest
    while (i < intervals.size()) result.add(intervals.get(i++)); 
    return result;
}

Posted by Jamie Meyer 15 days ago