DebuggingBroken Code in a Real Project | Dataford Interview Questions

Given a piece of broken code, find and fix the bugs.

Asked in the Technical interview stage. Python SWE, London.

The function should merge overlapping or touching inclusive intervals, return them sorted by start, and leave the input unchanged.

def merge_intervals(intervals):
    intervals.sort(key=lambda interval: interval[1])
    merged = intervals[0]
    for start, end in intervals[1:]:
        if start < merged[1]:
            merged[1] = max(merged[1], end)
        else:
            merged.append([start, end])
    return merged

Use the signature def merge_intervals(intervals):. Return a new list of [start, end] pairs. An empty input returns [].

Constraints

0 <= intervals.length <= 1000
Each interval contains exactly two integers, start and end
start <= end for every interval
-10^9 <= start <= end <= 10^9
Touching intervals, where next_start == current_end, must be merged
The input list and its inner lists must not be modified

Function Signature

def merge_intervals(intervals):

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