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 ] ) ; } } System . out . print ( " ERROR ! ! ! ▁ " + "returningNEW_LINE");  return 0 ; }