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Merging Overlapping Time Series

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Problem

Nokia NetAct exports telemetry as timestamped samples. Given two time-series datasets sorted by strictly increasing timestamp, merge them into one sorted dataset without duplicate timestamps. If both datasets contain the same timestamp, use the sample from series_b.

Formal Specification

Implement merge_time_series(series_a, series_b). Each input is a list of records represented as [timestamp, value], where timestamp is an integer and value is numeric. Return a new list containing every timestamp from either input exactly once, sorted in ascending timestamp order. Do not interpolate missing timestamps, alter values, or mutate either input list.

Constraints

  • Both inputs are sorted by strictly increasing timestamp
  • 0 <= len(series_a), len(series_b) <= 10^5
  • Timestamps are unique within each input
  • -10^12 <= timestamp <= 10^12
  • Values are integers or floating-point numbers

Function Signature

def merge_time_series(series_a, series_b):
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