To reverse a linked list in groups, you can follow these steps:
- Define a function that takes two arguments – the head node of the linked list and the size of the group.
- Traverse the linked list until you reach the end or until you have processed the last group of nodes.
- For each group of nodes, reverse the group by swapping the pointers between the nodes in the group. You can do this by maintaining three pointers – prev, curr, and next – and moving them accordingly.
- Update the head node of the linked list to point to the last node of the first group.
- Repeat steps 3-4 until you reach the end of the linked list.
here’s Kotlin code to reverse a linked list in groups :
class Node(var value: Int) {
var next: Node? = null
}
fun reverseInGroups(head: Node?, k: Int): Node? {
var curr = head
var prev: Node? = null
var next: Node? = null
var count = 0
// reverse first k nodes of the linked list
while (curr != null && count < k) {
next = curr.next
curr.next = prev
prev = curr
curr = next
count++
}
// recursively call the function for remaining nodes
if (next != null) {
head?.next = reverseInGroups(next, k)
}
// prev is the new head of the linked list
return prev
}
fun main() {
// create a linked list
val head = Node(1)
head.next = Node(2)
head.next?.next = Node(3)
head.next?.next?.next = Node(4)
head.next?.next?.next?.next = Node(5)
head.next?.next?.next?.next?.next = Node(6)
// reverse in groups of size 2
val k = 2
val newHead = reverseInGroups(head, k)
// print the reversed linked list
var node: Node? = newHead
while (node != null) {
print("${node.value} -> ")
node = node.next
}
print("null")
}
- The function takes two arguments:
head
is the head node of the linked list to be reversed andk
is the size of the group in which the list needs to be reversed. - The function defines three variables:
curr
is the current node being processed,prev
is the previous node, andnext
is the next node in the list.count
is used to keep track of the number of nodes processed in the current group. - Inside the
while
loop, the function reverses the nodes in groups of sizek
. It does this by swapping thenext
pointer of the current node with theprev
pointer, and then movingprev
,curr
, andnext
one node to the right. This continues untilcount
reachesk
or until the end of the linked list is reached. - After the
while
loop, if there are remaining nodes in the list, the function recursively calls itself with thenext
node as the newhead
. The result of this recursive call is then assigned to thenext
pointer of the originalhead
. - Finally, the function returns the
prev
node, which is the new head of the reversed linked list.
In the main
function, we create a linked list with six nodes and call the reverseInGroups
function to reverse the nodes in groups of size 2. The newHead
variable is assigned the result of this function call.
Then, we traverse the reversed linked list starting from newHead
and print each node’s value followed by an arrow. We keep doing this until we reach the end of the linked list, which is indicated by a null
value.
The time complexity of the reverseInGroups
function is O(n), where n is the number of nodes in the linked list. This is because the function needs to traverse each node in the linked list exactly once. The time complexity of the function is not affected by the group size k
.
The space complexity of the function is O(k), where k is the group size. This is because the function uses k
variables (curr
, prev
, next
, and count
) to keep track of the nodes being processed in the current group. The function uses a constant amount of additional space for each group of nodes being processed, so the total space used is proportional to the group size k
.