zyBooks_18_13
We are in the middle of using merge sort to sort the list (3, 2, 1, 7, 10, 4, 5, 9). Assuming we just got two sorted sublists (4,10) and (5,9), the next step is to merge the two sublists.
During the merge of the two sublists, what is the second value to collect into the merged list?

Question

zyBooks_18_13
We are in the middle of using merge sort to sort the list (3, 2, 1, 7, 10, 4, 5, 9). Assuming we just got two sorted sublists (4,10) and (5,9), the next step is to merge the two sublists.
During the merge of the two sublists, what is the second value to collect into the merged list?

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

We’re at a merge step with two sorted sublists: (4, 10) and (5, 9). The merging process compares the heads of both lists and appends the smaller head to the merged result.
Option 1: '1' is not present in either head position or immediate next candidate, so this would be incorrect because neither 1 is the smallest available next value.
Option 4: '4' is the first value chosen when merging, since 4 from the first sublist is less than 5 from the second sublist. This would be the first collected value, not the second.
Option 2: '2' does not appear in either sublist at all, so it cannot be produced by the merge operation in this step; selecting 2 would be a misunderstanding of the current data.
Option 5: '5' is the next candidate after 4 has been taken from (4, 10). At that point, the heads are 10 (from the first sublist) and 5 (from the second sublist); since 5 < 10, the next value appended to the merged list is 5.
In the context of the merge procedure, this reasoning aligns with the standard merge rule: always take the smaller of the two current heads and advance that list’s pointer. Here, after outputting 4, the next smaller head is 5, leading to 5 as the second collected value.

zyBooks_18_13 We are in the middle of using merge sort to sort the list (3, 2, 1, 7, 10, 4, 5, 9). Assuming we just got two sorted sublists (4,10) and (5,9), the next step is to merge the two sublists. During the merge of the two sublists, what is the second value to collect into the merged list?

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