merging intervals repeatedly

[Magdoll]

Correct. I meant the final should be
(1,30), (29,40), (50,100)

On Mar 11, 3:41 pm, Magdoll <magd... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have to read through a file that will give me a bunch of intervals.
> My ultimate goal is to produce a final set of intervals such that not
> two intervals overlap by more than N, where N is a predetermined
> length.
>
> For example, I could read through this input:
> (1,10), (3,15), (20,30),(29,40),(51,65),(62,100),(50,66)
>
> btw, the input is not guaranteed to be in any sorted order.
>
> say N = 5, so the final set should be
> (1,15), (20, 30), (29, 40), (50, 100)
>
> Is there already some existing code in Python that I can easily take
> advantage of to produce this? Right now I've written my own simple
> solution, which is just to maintain a list of the intervals. I can use
> the Interval module, but it doesn't really affect much. I read one
> interval from the input file at a time, and use bisect to insert it in
> order. The problem comes with merging, which sometimes can be
> cascading.
>
> ex:
> read (51,65) ==> put (51,65) in list
> read (62,100) ==> put (62,100) in list (overlap only be 4 <= N)
> read (50,66) ==> merge with (51,65) to become (50,66) ==> now can
> merge with (62,100)
>
> Of course I can check for cascading merges by pivoting around the
> position where the insertion would've taken place...but just
> wondering, is there some other nice way to do this? I also intuitively
> don't sense a need for using trees, unless someone's already written
> it, the interface is easy to use, and it won't result in more insert/
> delete/structure changes that nullifies its beauty...(also I'm not
> using the output list for searching)
>
> Thanks in advance.