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Easily Learn To Use Merge Sort Algorithm With Linked Lists In C++

A Linked List, composed with structure elements and it is a linear data structure, and each elements are stored at different memory locations. Linked lists are good to add, inserts, subtract, delete each elements from this list. A Simple linked list example is given before in this Learn to Code Simple Linked List in Modern C++ on Windows post.

In present post we will explain how to sort two linked lists with a merge sort algorithm.

Let’s start a simple node for a linked list.

We need a function that adds a new linked list member and return it’s address as a pointer. This add_new_link(…) function below will help to do this;

We need to delete all allocated lists from the memory, delete_linklist(…) function below will delete all nodes from the memory by a given header.

We can use Merge Sort algorithm to sort a linked list by a given header. When using Merge Sort function we should use Frontback Split algorithm in it, both can be written as below;

If two linked list is sorted in their order we can combine both into one header pointer with this sorted_merge(..) function given below.

We can use this merge_sort_links() function to combine h1 and h2 headers to h header as given below;

We can print all linked list members with this print_linkedlist() function starting from address at header pointer ;

Finally, in the main() function of our application we can sort head1 and head2 with mergesort(…) function and we can combine both with merge_sort_links() functions as given below;

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About author

Dr. Yilmaz Yoru has 35+ years of coding with more than 30+ programming languages, mostly C++ on Windows, Android, Mac-OS, iOS, Linux, and some other operating systems. He graduated and received his MSc and PhD degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Eskisehir Osmangazi University. He is the founder and CEO of ESENJA LLC Company. His interests are Programming, Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Artificial Intelligence, 2D & 3D Designs, and high-end innovations.
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