The algorithm merge() combines two ordered sequences to form a new ordered sequence. The size of the result is the sum of the sizes of the two argument sequences. This should be contrasted with the set_union() operation, which eliminates elements that are duplicated in both sets. The set_union() function is described later in this chapter.
The merge operation is stable. This means, for equal elements in the two ranges, not only is the relative ordering of values from each range preserved, but the values from the first range always precede the elements from the second. The two ranges are described by a pair of iterators, whereas the result is defined by a single output iterator. The arguments are shown in the following declaration:
OutputIterator merge (InputIterator first1, InputIterator last1, InputIterator first2, InputIterator last2, OutputIterator result [, Compare ]);
The example program illustrates a simple merge, the use of a merge with an inserter, and the use of a merge with an output stream iterator.
void merge_example ()
// illustrates the use of the merge algorithm
// see alg7.cpp for complete source code
{
// make a list and vector of 10 random integers
vector<int> aVec(10);
list<int> aList(10, 0);
generate (aVec.begin(), aVec.end(), randomValue);
sort (aVec.begin(), aVec.end());
generate_n (aList.begin(), 10, randomValue);
aList.sort();
// merge into a vector
vector<int> vResult (aVec.size() + aList.size());
merge (aVec.begin(), aVec.end(), aList.begin(), aList.end(),
vResult.begin());
// merge into a list
list<int> lResult;
merge (aVec.begin(), aVec.end(), aList.begin(), aList.end(),
inserter(lResult, lResult.begin()));
// merge into the output
merge (aVec.begin(), aVec.end(), aList.begin(), aList.end(),
ostream_iterator<int,char> (cout, " "));
cout << endl;
}
The algorithm inplace_merge() (Section 13.4.6) can be used to merge two sections of a single sequence into one sequence.