2. Add Two Numbers

You are given two non-empty linked lists representing two non-negative integers. The digits are stored in reverse order and each of their nodes contain a single digit. Add the two numbers and return it as a linked list.

You may assume the two numbers do not contain any leading zero, except the number 0 itself.

Example

Input: (2 -> 4 -> 3) + (5 -> 6 -> 4)
Output: 7 -> 0 -> 8
Explanation: 342 + 465 = 807.

My Solution:

/**
 * Definition for singly-linked list.
 * public class ListNode {
 *     int val;
 *     ListNode next;
 *     ListNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
class Solution {
    public ListNode addTwoNumbers(ListNode l1, ListNode l2) {
        boolean carry = false;
        ListNode result = new ListNode(0);
        ListNode p = result;
        while(l1 != null || l2 != null){
        	int s = 0;
        	if(carry == true) {
        		s = 1;
        		carry = false;
        	}
            int a = l1 == null ? 0 : l1.val;
            int b = l2 == null ? 0 : l2.val;
            s += a + b;
            if(s >= 10) {
            	carry = true;
            	s %= 10;
            }
            p.next = new ListNode(s);
            p = p.next;
            if(l1 !=null)
            	l1 = l1.next;
            if(l2 !=null)
            	l2 = l2.next;
        }
        if(carry) {
        	p.next = new ListNode(1);
        }
        return result.next;
    }
}

Solution:

Intuition

Keep track of the carry using a variable and simulate digits-by-digits sum starting from the head of list, which contains the least-significant digit.

Figure 1. Visualization of the addition of two numbers: 342 + 465 = 807.
Each node contains a single digit and the digits are stored in reverse order.

Algorithm

Just like how you would sum two numbers on a piece of paper, we begin by summing the least-significant digits, which is the head of l1 and l2. Since each digit is in the range of $0\dots 9$, summing two digits may "overflow". For example 5 + 7 = 12. In this case, we set the current digit to 2 and bring over the carry = 1 to the next iteration. carry must be either 0 or $1$ because the largest possible sum of two digits (including the carry) is 9 + 9 + 1 = 19

The pseudocode is as following:

• Initialize current node to dummy head of the returning list.
• Initialize carry to $0$.
• Initialize p and q to head of l1 and l2 respectively.
• Loop through lists l1 and l2 until you reach both ends.
  • Set $x$ to node p's value. If p has reached the end of l1, set to $0$.
  • Set $y$ to node q's value. If q has reached the end of l2, set to $0$.
  • Set sum = x + y + carry.
  • Update carry = sum / 10.
  • Create a new node with the digit value of (sum mod 10) and set it to current node's next, then advance current node to next.
  • Advance both p and q.
• Check if carry = 1, if so append a new node with digit 1 to the returning list.
• Return dummy head's next node.

Note that we use a dummy head to simplify the code. Without a dummy head, you would have to write extra conditional statements to initialize the head's value.

Take extra caution of the following cases:

public ListNode addTwoNumbers(ListNode l1, ListNode l2) {
    ListNode dummyHead = new ListNode(0);
    ListNode p = l1, q = l2, curr = dummyHead;
    int carry = 0;
    while (p != null || q != null) {
        int x = (p != null) ? p.val : 0;
        int y = (q != null) ? q.val : 0;
        int sum = carry + x + y;
        carry = sum / 10;
        curr.next = new ListNode(sum % 10);
        curr = curr.next;
        if (p != null) p = p.next;
        if (q != null) q = q.next;
    }
    if (carry > 0) {
        curr.next = new ListNode(carry);
    }
    return dummyHead.next;
}

• Time complexity :$O(\max (m,n))$. Assume that $m$ and $n$ represents the length of l1 and l2 respectively, the algorithm above iterates at most $\max (m,n)$ times.

• Space complexity : $O(\max (m,n))$. The length of the new list is at most $\max (m,n)+1$.

Follow up

What if the the digits in the linked list are stored in non-reversed order? For example:

$$(3\to 4\to 2)+(4\to 6\to 5)=8\to 0\to 7$$

Summary:

本题一开始我的思路是将两个链表里的数相加，再逐位存入链表。但很明显这种方法是不好的，很容易导致溢出等错误。

此类题目应该进行逐位的运算，判断是否进位，再进行下一位的运算。需要注意的是两个数字可能位数不一样，此时需要补零进行计算。对于链表的结构和运用还不够了解。

此外，由于本题数字是反转后存入链表的，存储的顺序恰好和计算的顺序一致，若不反转则难度又提升了。相关习题：445. Add Two Numbers II。