Alternating Characters Merge | Dataford Interview Questions

Simon AI displays paired event labels by interleaving characters from two strings. Given strings a and b, return a new string formed by taking one character from a, then one from b, repeating while both strings have characters remaining. Append the unused suffix of the longer string unchanged.

Formal Specification

Implement merge_alternating(a, b).

Input: Two strings a and b.
Output: A string containing all characters from a and b, in alternating order whenever both strings still have characters.
Alternation starts with a.
Empty strings are valid inputs.
Treat each Python string character as one character, including spaces and punctuation.

Constraints

0 <= len(a), len(b) <= 10^5
Both inputs are valid Python strings
The output contains exactly len(a) + len(b) characters

Function Signature

def merge_alternating(a, b):

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Problem