Watch 10 video solutions for Accounts Merge, a medium level problem involving Array, Hash Table, String. This walkthrough by take U forward has 191,102 views views. Want to try solving it yourself? Practice on FleetCode or read the detailed text solution.
Given a list of accounts where each element accounts[i] is a list of strings, where the first element accounts[i][0] is a name, and the rest of the elements are emails representing emails of the account.
Now, we would like to merge these accounts. Two accounts definitely belong to the same person if there is some common email to both accounts. Note that even if two accounts have the same name, they may belong to different people as people could have the same name. A person can have any number of accounts initially, but all of their accounts definitely have the same name.
After merging the accounts, return the accounts in the following format: the first element of each account is the name, and the rest of the elements are emails in sorted order. The accounts themselves can be returned in any order.
Example 1:
Input: accounts = [["John","johnsmith@mail.com","john_newyork@mail.com"],["John","johnsmith@mail.com","john00@mail.com"],["Mary","mary@mail.com"],["John","johnnybravo@mail.com"]] Output: [["John","john00@mail.com","john_newyork@mail.com","johnsmith@mail.com"],["Mary","mary@mail.com"],["John","johnnybravo@mail.com"]] Explanation: The first and second John's are the same person as they have the common email "johnsmith@mail.com". The third John and Mary are different people as none of their email addresses are used by other accounts. We could return these lists in any order, for example the answer [['Mary', 'mary@mail.com'], ['John', 'johnnybravo@mail.com'], ['John', 'john00@mail.com', 'john_newyork@mail.com', 'johnsmith@mail.com']] would still be accepted.
Example 2:
Input: accounts = [["Gabe","Gabe0@m.co","Gabe3@m.co","Gabe1@m.co"],["Kevin","Kevin3@m.co","Kevin5@m.co","Kevin0@m.co"],["Ethan","Ethan5@m.co","Ethan4@m.co","Ethan0@m.co"],["Hanzo","Hanzo3@m.co","Hanzo1@m.co","Hanzo0@m.co"],["Fern","Fern5@m.co","Fern1@m.co","Fern0@m.co"]] Output: [["Ethan","Ethan0@m.co","Ethan4@m.co","Ethan5@m.co"],["Gabe","Gabe0@m.co","Gabe1@m.co","Gabe3@m.co"],["Hanzo","Hanzo0@m.co","Hanzo1@m.co","Hanzo3@m.co"],["Kevin","Kevin0@m.co","Kevin3@m.co","Kevin5@m.co"],["Fern","Fern0@m.co","Fern1@m.co","Fern5@m.co"]]
Constraints:
1 <= accounts.length <= 10002 <= accounts[i].length <= 101 <= accounts[i][j].length <= 30accounts[i][0] consists of English letters.accounts[i][j] (for j > 0) is a valid email.Problem Overview: You receive a list of user accounts where each entry contains a name followed by multiple email addresses. Two accounts belong to the same person if they share at least one common email. The task is to merge such accounts and return the consolidated list with unique emails sorted lexicographically.
Approach 1: Graph-Based Approach (DFS/BFS) (Time: O(E log E), Space: O(E))
Treat each email as a node in a graph. If two emails appear in the same account, connect them with an edge. This creates connected components where all emails in the same component belong to the same user. Build an adjacency list using a hash table, then run DFS or BFS from each unvisited email to collect all reachable emails in that component. Track the account name associated with each email during construction. After collecting a component, sort the emails before adding them to the result. The key insight is that shared emails create graph connectivity, so the merge problem becomes a connected-components problem.
Approach 2: Union-Find Approach (Disjoint Set) (Time: O(E log E), Space: O(E))
Use a Union-Find data structure to group emails belonging to the same person. Iterate through each account and union the first email with every other email in that account. Maintain a parent mapping for each email and apply path compression to keep operations nearly constant time. After processing all unions, group emails by their root parent using a hash map. Each group represents a merged account. Sort the emails in each group and prepend the corresponding user name. This approach avoids explicit graph traversal and is often cleaner for connectivity problems.
Recommended for interviews: The Union-Find approach is typically preferred because it models the merging operation directly and scales well when many accounts share emails. The graph approach demonstrates strong understanding of connected components using DFS or BFS, which interviewers also value. Showing the graph interpretation first and then optimizing with Union-Find demonstrates solid problem-solving depth.
| Approach | Time | Space | When to Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Graph Traversal (DFS/BFS) | O(E log E) | O(E) | When modeling the problem as connected components in a graph and using DFS/BFS is more intuitive |
| Union-Find (Disjoint Set) | O(E log E) | O(E) | Best general solution for merging sets with shared identifiers like emails |