Interval merge for maintenance windows

Python data engineering interview problem. Difficulty: advanced. Pattern: Sorting. About 20 minutes. Part of the Pro drill bank.

Maintenance windows are intervals on a timeline. Overlapping windows should merge so the calendar shows one closed period instead of three stacked ones.

Merge overlapping maintenance intervals.

Requirements

• Overlapping or touching intervals become one.
• Non-overlapping intervals stay separate.

Constraints

• windows: list of [start, end] pairs.
• Unsorted input must still work.

Examples

Input: merge_windows([[1, 3], [2, 6], [8, 10]]) Output: [[1, 6], [8, 10]] This input follows the stated rules and produces this output.

Topics: lakebench, python, sorting.

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