When you see a prompt phrased like this it can feel a bit confusing with all the talk of minimal indices, but the meat of the problem is actually quite simple when you boil it down. If there are no duplicates, return "No duplicates here!". If there are more than one duplicated elements, return the element for which the second occurrence has a smaller index than the second occurrence of the other element. Given an array containing integers, strings, or a mixture of data types, find the first duplicate element in the array for which the second occurrence has the minimal index. While this problem may be a bit more simple than something you'll directly encounter in an interview setting, the core concept we'll use to solve it (and the process of coming up with it) will be applicable to far more complex problems later on.įirst off, let's make sure that we're clear about what our imagined prompt is: In this blog post we'll be exploring the thought process behind a solution to a potential interview question you might come across as a software engineer: how to find the first duplicate element in an array (integers, strings or otherwise.)
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