1768. Merge Strings Alternately

Difficulty: EASY

Problem description can be found here.

Approach

Leveraging on two pointers.

Solution

function mergeAlternately(word1: string, word2: string): string {
  let output = "";

  // Using 2 pointers
  let i = 0;
  let j = 0;

  while (i < word1.length && j < word2.length) {
    output += word1.charAt(i);
    output += word2.charAt(i);

    i++;
    j++;
  }

  output += word1.slice(i, word1.length);
  output += word2.slice(i, word2.length);

  return output;
}

My Solution

function mergeAlternately(word1: string, word2: string): string {
  let output = "";

  if (word1.length >= word2.length) {
    for (let i = 0; i < word1.length; i++) {
      output += word1.charAt(i);

      if (word2.charAt(i)) {
        output += word2.charAt(i);
      }
    }
  } else {
    for (let i = 0; i < word2.length; i++) {
      if (word1.charAt(i)) {
        output += word1.charAt(i);
      }

      output += word2.charAt(i);
    }
  }

  return output;
}

console.log(mergeAlternately("abc", "pqr"));
console.log(mergeAlternately("ab", "pqrs"));
console.log(mergeAlternately("abcd", "pq"));