LeetCode 136. Single Number 自我反思

Given a non-empty array of integers, every element appears twice except for one. Find that single one.

Note:

Your algorithm should have a linear runtime complexity. Could you implement it without using extra memory?

Example 1:

Input: [2,2,1]
Output: 1

Example 2:

Input: [4,1,2,1,2]
Output: 4

这一题很有意思，做应该是会做，但是用unordered_set 做的话，虽然是线性时间，但也是很慢。看了题解之后，才明白了数学的美妙之处。还要多积累知识，多发散思维。

Approach : Bit Manipulation

Concept

• If we take XOR of zero and some bit, it will return that bit
  • $a\oplus 0=a$
• If we take XOR of two same bits, it will return 0
  • $a\oplus a=0$
• $a\oplus b\oplus a=(a\oplus a)\oplus b=0\oplus b=b$

So we can XOR all bits together to find the unique number.

Complexity Analysis

• Time complexity : $O(n)$. We only iterate through $\text{nums}$, so the time complexity is the number of elements in $\text{nums}$.

• Space complexity : $O(1)$.

class Solution {
public:
    int singleNumber(vector<int>& nums) {
        int a = 0;
        for(auto num: nums)
            a ^= num;
        return a;
    }
};