Remove Element

Remove Element is a Easy Data Structures and Algorithms interview problem you can solve, run and submit on Thita.ai. It belongs to the Two Pointers pattern, in the In-place Array Modification subpattern.

Problem statement

Given an integer array nums and an integer val, remove all occurrences of val in nums in-place. The order of the elements may be changed. Then return the number of elements in nums which are not equal to val.

Consider the number of elements in nums which are not equal to val 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 elements which are not equal to val. 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 val = ...; // Value to remove int[] expectedNums = [...]; // The expected answer with correct length. // It is sorted with no values equaling val.

int k = removeElement(nums, val); // Calls your implementation

assert k == expectedNums.length; sort(nums, 0, k); // Sort the first k elements of nums for (int i = 0; i < actualLength; i++) { assert nums[i] == expectedNums[i]; }

If all assertions pass, then your solution will be accepted.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [3,2,2,3], val = 3 Output: 2, nums = [2,2,,] Explanation: Your function should return k = 2, with the first two elements of nums being 2. It does not matter what you leave beyond the returned k (hence they are underscores).

Example 2:

Input: nums = [0,1,2,2,3,0,4,2], val = 2 Output: 5, nums = [0,1,4,0,3,,,] Explanation: Your function should return k = 5, with the first five elements of nums containing 0, 0, 1, 3, and 4. Note that the five elements can be returned in any order. It does not matter what you leave beyond the returned k (hence they are underscores).

Constraints:

- 0 <= nums.length <= 100

- 0 <= nums[i] <= 50

- 0 <= val <= 100

Topics and companies

Topics: Array, Two Pointers.

Reported in interviews at Adobe, Amazon, Oracle.

How to practise Remove Element on Thita.ai

Starter code is provided in C, C#, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript and Python. Your solution runs against 5 test cases for this problem, with the AI coach available for a hint when you are stuck rather than a finished answer. The reference solution runs in O(n) time and O(1) space.

Open Remove Element in the code editor, or read the Remove Element editorial for a worked solution with its approach and complexity analysis.

Where Remove Element sits in the DSA pattern sheet

Problems related to Remove Element

Other problems that use the same In-place Array Modification and Two Pointers techniques:

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