Problem:
Follow up for "Remove Duplicates":
What if duplicates are allowed at most twice?
For example,
Given sorted array nums = [1,1,1,2,2,3]
,
Your function should return length = 5
, with the first five elements of nums being 1
, 1
, 2
, 2
and 3
. It doesn't matter what you leave beyond the new length.
Analysis:
A wrong solution: <When you update on a array and check on the array, you must be careful about if you get the original data or updated date> public int removeDuplicates(int[] nums) { if (nums == null || nums.length == 0) return 0; if (nums.length <= 2) return nums.length; int count = 2; for (int i = 2; i < nums.length; i++) { if (nums[i] == nums[i-1] && nums[i-1] == nums[i-2]) continue; count++; nums[count-1] = nums[i]; } return count; } Problem 1: This solution is ugly!!! The code if (nums[i] == nums[i-1] && nums[i-1] == nums[i-2]) continue; count++; nums[count-1] = nums[i]; The above code could be written into: if !(nums[i] == nums[i-1] && nums[i-1] == nums[i-2]) nums[count] = nums[i]; count++; Problem 2: The solution has implemention logic error. <When you update on a array and check on the same array, you must be careful about if you get the original data or updated date> Cases: 1, 1, 1, 2, 2 After interation: i == 3, 1, 1, (2), 2, *2 At interation: i == 4 We could see nums[4] == nums[3] && nums[3] == nums[2] Which is wrong!!! we replaced nums[2] with 2, but nums[3] still in it's original position. We lose the information of original nums[2]. How could we solve this problem??? A great idea: check if (nums[i] != nums[count-2]) Note: the count pointer always point to the next avaiable position. nums[count-1] means the last element we place into nums. nums[count-2] means the last two element we place into nums. Keep on thing in mind, if the current element num[i] has already been appeared more than two times, it must be nums[count-1] and nums[count-2]. !!! And if nums[count-2] == nums[count], it means nums[count-2] must equal to nums[count-1]. If not, we could not skip it! if (nums[i] != nums[count-2]) { nums[count] = nums[i]; count++; } Genius thinking!
Solution:
public class Solution { public int removeDuplicates(int[] nums) { if (nums == null || nums.length == 0) return 0; if (nums.length <= 2) return nums.length; int count = 2; for (int i = 2; i < nums.length; i++) { if (nums[i] != nums[count-2]) { nums[count] = nums[i]; count++; } } return count; } }