[codesignal] firstDuplicate - Google

CodeSignal

Description

Given an array a that contains only numbers in the range from 1 to a.length, find the first duplicate number for which the second occurrence has the minimal index. In other words, if there are more than 1 duplicated numbers, return the number for which the second occurrence has a smaller index than the second occurrence of the other number does. If there are no such elements, return -1.

Example

For a = [2, 1, 3, 5, 3, 2], the output should be firstDuplicate(a) = 3.

There are 2 duplicates: numbers 2 and 3. The second occurrence of 3 has a smaller index than the second occurrence of 2 does, so the answer is 3.

For a = [2, 2], the output should be firstDuplicate(a) = 2;

For a = [2, 4, 3, 5, 1], the output should be firstDuplicate(a) = -1.

Input/Output

• [execution time limit] 0.5 seconds (cpp)

• [input] array.integer a

  • Guaranteed constraints:
    • 1 ≤ a.length ≤ 10^5,
    • 1 ≤ a[i] ≤ a.length.

• [output] integer

  • The element in a that occurs in the array more than once and has the minimal index for its second occurrence. If there are no such elements, return -1.

Solutions

solution 1: using set

遍历数组，同时将元素插入到 set 中，如果在遍历时能在 set 中找到该元素，则该元素即是第一个重复的数。需要额外的空间。

int firstDuplicate(std::vector<int> a) {
    std::unordered_set<int> set;
    for (auto ele: a) {
        if (set.find(ele) != set.end()) {
            return ele;
        }else {
            set.insert(ele);
        }
    }

    return -1;
}

solution 2: math

遍历数组，并将数组值作为索引，将索引对应的值变号，如果在遍历过程中，索引对应的值已经是负数（已经变过号），则该值为第一个重复的元素。

int firstDuplicate(std::vector<int> a) {
    for (int i = 0; i < a.size(); ++i) {
        int index = abs(a[i]);
        if (a[index - 1] < 0) {
            return index;
        } else {
            a[index - 1] = - a[index - 1];
        }
    }

    return -1;
}