C++ delete duplicates from cstring [closed] - c++

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I have a c-string that looks something like ABBBCACACACBA and I'm supposed to create a function that deletes the duplicate characters so I end up with ABC. I created a nested for loop that replaces every letter that matches the letter in the outer loop with a \0 and increments a counter that keeps track of the repeats. I'm getting -1 as the amount of repeats that should be documented, and from checking it spits out ABBC instead of ABC. I'm stumped, any ideas?
for (int i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
{
for (int j = i + 1; j < SIZE; j++)
{
if (letter[i] == letter[j])
{
letter[j] = '\0';
repeatCounter++;
}
}
}

Answer 1

It is not enough to just replace duplicates with '\0', you have to actually remove them from the string and shift the remaining characters down. Try something more like this:
int size = SIZE, i = 0;
while (i < size)
{
int j = i + 1;
while (j < size)
{
if (letter[j] == letter[i])
{
for (int k = j + 1; k < size; k++)
{
letter[k-1] = letter[k];
}
letter[--size] = '\0';
repeatCounter++;
continue;
}
j++;
}
i++;
}
Live Demo

Answer 2

Here's a simple example which does what you want. It uses std::string to store the output. You can copy-n-paste the code here to test and run. Look into using std::string as it has functions which will make your life easy.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string input("ABBBCACACACBA");
string output;
for(size_t i = 0; i < input.size(); i++)
{
if(output.find(input[i]) == string::npos)
{
output += input[i];
}
}
cout << "Input: " << input << endl;
cout << "Output: " << output << endl;
return 0;
}