Bridge Shuffle

Challenge Difficulty: Medium | Estimated completion time: ~15 minutes

Create a function to bridge shuffle two arrays.

To bridge shuffle, you interleave the elements from both arrays in an alternating fashion:

array1 = ["A", "A", "A"]
array2 = ["B", "B", "B"]
 
shuffled_array = ["A", "B", "A", "B", "A", "B"]

This can still work with two arrays of uneven length. We simply tack on the extra elements from the longer array:

array1 = ["C", "C", "C", "C"]
array2 = ["D"]
 
shuffled_array = ["C", "D", "C", "C", "C"]

Examples

bridgeShuffle(["A", "A", "A"], ["B", "B", "B"])
output = ["A", "B", "A", "B", "A", "B"]
 
bridgeShuffle(["C", "C", "C", "C"], ["D"])
output = ["C", "D", "C", "C", "C"]
 
bridgeShuffle([1, 3, 5, 7], [2, 4, 6])
output = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Notes

• Elements in both arrays can be strings or integers.
• If two arrays are of unequal length, add the additional elements of the longer array to the end of the shuffled array.
• Always start your shuffle with the first element of Array 1.

Solution

Python

from typing import Any def bridge_shuffle(array1: list[Any], array2: list[Any]) -> list[Any]: """Interleave two arrays, starting with array1. Args: array1: First array (strings or integers) array2: Second array (strings or integers) Returns: Shuffled array with interleaved elements """ result: list[Any] = [] max_length = max(len(array1), len(array2)) for index in range(max_length): if index < len(array1): result.append(array1[index]) if index < len(array2): result.append(array2[index]) return result if __name__ == "__main__": print(bridge_shuffle(["A", "A", "A"], ["B", "B", "B"])) # ['A', 'B', 'A', 'B', 'A', 'B'] print(bridge_shuffle(["C", "C", "C", "C"], ["D"])) # ['C', 'D', 'C', 'C', 'C'] print(bridge_shuffle([1, 3, 5, 7], [2, 4, 6])) # [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Output