and this condition happens when we don 't have any  elements in the first half from b[] so we  returning the last element in a[] from the first half.
if ( j == 0 ) return a [ i - 1 ] ; else return maximum ( a [ i - 1 ] , b [ j - 1 ] ) ; } } cout << " ERROR ! ! ! ▁ " << " returning STRNEWLINE " ; return 0 ; }