🧠 LeetCode #56 (Merge Intervals) — Needed a Few Tries to Crack It
It took me over 2 hours and 3 failed attempts to solve [LeetCode 56: Merge Intervals].
Why?
Because sometimes the problem description and examples just aren’t enough to guide you — and that’s part of the challenge.
Some tricky cases like:
[[1,4],[2,3]]
[[1,4],[0,4]]
kept failing.
I assumed the intervals were always in sorted order — they weren’t.
Then I peeked at the solution and saw:
sort(intervals.begin(), intervals.end());
That one line changed everything.
I paused, dug into how 2D sorting works in C++, and that helped unlock the logic.
💡 What I Learned:
✅ How sorting works for 2D vectors
🗣️ Reading discussions and others’ code can speed up learning
✍️ Writing it by hand helped reinforce the logic
📸 Sharing my handwritten notes and final accepted solution in C++:
If you're just starting out too — remember: it's okay to take time. The goal is to learn.
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