Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array
Difficulty: Easy
Category: DSA
Topics: Array, Two Pointers
Asked at: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft
Given an integer array `nums` sorted in **non-decreasing order**, remove the duplicates **in-place** such that each unique element appears only **once**. The **relative order** of the elements should be kept the **same**. Then return _the number of unique elements in _`nums`.
Consider the number of unique elements of `nums` to be `k`, to get accepted, you need to do the following things:
- Change the array `nums` such that the first `k` elements of `nums` contain the unique elements in the order they were present in `nums` initially. The remaining elements of `nums` are not important as well as the size of `nums`.
- Return `k`.
**Custom Judge:**
The judge will test your solution with the following code:
int[] nums = [...]; // Input array
int[] expectedNums = [...]; // The expected answer with correct length
int k = removeDuplicates(nums); // Calls your implementation
assert k == expectedNums.length;
for (int i = 0; i < k; i++) {
assert nums[i] == expectedNums[i];
}
```
If all assertions pass, then your solution will be **accepted**.
**Example 1:**
**Input:** nums = [1,1,2]
**Output:** 2, nums = [1,2,_]
**Explanation:** Your function should return k = 2, with the first two elements of nums being 1 and 2 respectively.
It does not matter what you leave beyond the returned k (hence they are underscores).
```
**Example 2:**
**Input:** nums = [0,0,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4]
**Output:** 5, nums = [0,1,2,3,4,_,_,_,_,_]
**Explanation:** Your function should return k = 5, with the first five elements of nums being 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively.
It does not matter what you leave beyond the returned k (hence they are underscores).
```
**Constraints:**
- `1 <= nums.length <= 3 * 104`
- `-100 <= nums[i] <= 100`
- `nums` is sorted in **non-decreasing** order.