26. Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array

Description

Given a sorted array, remove the duplicates in-place such that each element appear only once and return the new length.
Do not allocate extra space for another array, you must do this by modifying the input array in-place with O(1) extra memory.
Example:
Given nums = [1,1,2],
Your function should return length = 2, with the first two elements of nums being 1 and 2 respectively.
It doesn’t matter what you leave beyond the new length.

Solution

class Solution {
public:
    int removeDuplicates(vector<int>& nums) {
        if (nums.size() == 0) return 0;
        int i = 0;
        for (int j = 1; j < nums.size(); j++) {
        if (nums[j] != nums[i]) {
            nums[++i] = nums[j];
        }
      }
        return i + 1;
    }
};

Analysis

这道题的大意是对一个排序好的数组，删除其中重复的元素，结果返回新数组的长度。这里和26的Remove Element比较类似，我们同样使用两个游标i与j。当数组为空时，直接返回0。反之，使用i记录数组第一个元素的位置。执行循环，当nums[ j ]=nums[ i ]时，j加1，直到nums[ j ]！=nums[ i ]，i加1，此时令nums[ i ]=nums[ j ]。重复上述过程直到循环结束。
对于例题中的nums=[ 1,1,2 ],起始 i=0，遇到了nums[ 0 ]=nums[ 1 ],j加1。到j等于2时，nums[ 2 ]！=nums[ 0 ]，此时i加1，令nums[ 1 ]=nums[ 2 ]。最后返回了i+1,即2。