Eliminating duplicates

[C-Struggler]

Hi everyone...I'm trying to eliminate duplicates from my array...The program compiles find but hangs and will not execute...Could someone look at my loops for eliminating the duplicates and tell me why this is. The program runs fine without the following code, but prints duplicates.

	while(fscanf(fptr,"%d",&array[i]) != NULL)
	{
	   for (i = 0; i<MaxElements; i++)
	   {
		   for (j = i; j<MaxElements ; j++)
		   {
				if ( array[i] == array[j] )
					
					for (k=j; k < MaxElements; k++)
					{
						array[j] = array[j+1];
						MaxElements = MaxElements - 1;
					}

		   }
	   }
	   
	   ++i;
	   if(i >= MaxElements) break;
	}
	--i;
	fclose(fptr);

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Codeplug]

Don't you want to load the array with numbers before you remove the duplicates?

Also, your inner-most for loop is looping on 'k', but I don't see 'k' being used.....<hint><hint>

There are some other things...try this data set when you have something working "1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2".


gg

[C-Struggler]

Okay...I changed some things on it and got it a little closer to working properly....It may help more if I display the full program....The file that the program is reading from has the following in it.
2
2
3
3
4
5
5
6
6
7
7
8
8
9

The file that the program writes to after the program is run displays the following.
5
3
2

which isn't quite right. Here is my updated code.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

FILE *fptr;

int main()
{
	int array[15];
	int i=0;
	int j=0;
	int k=0;
	int MaxElements = 15;

	char readFile[30];
	char writeFile[30];

	
	printf("What is the filename that you're going to read from: ");
	scanf("%s",readFile);

	printf("What is filename that you're going to write to: ");
	scanf("%s",writeFile);

	//open the file
	fptr = fopen(readFile,"r"); 
	if((fptr = fopen(readFile, "r")) == NULL) 
		exit(1);

	//read input

	while(fscanf(fptr,"%d",&array[i]) != NULL)
	{
	   ++i;
	   if(i >= MaxElements) break;

	}

	--i;
	fclose(fptr);	   

	for (i = 0; i<MaxElements; i++)
	   {
		   for (j = i; j<MaxElements ; j++)
		   {
				if ( array[i] == array[j] )
					
					for (k=j; k < MaxElements; k++)
					{
						array[k] = array[k+1];
						MaxElements = MaxElements - 1;
					}

		   }
	   }


	fptr = fopen(writeFile, "w");
	if(fptr)
	{
	   while(i > 0)
	   {
		  fprintf(fptr, "%d\n", array[--i]);
	   }
	   fclose(fptr);
	}
}

[Sebastiani]

When you find the duplicate, you will have to remove it by shifting all of the following elements over, right? This could be a potentially slow process. My suggestion would be to have either a second array for copying to, or just set duplicate values to a predetermined value, like -1, to signify an element to be ignored.

You could even put the two together like this:

// loop thru and mark dup's

int k = 0;

while(k < length) 
{
 duplicate = array[k++];
   for(int i = k; i < length; ++i)
    if(array[i] == duplicate)
     array[i] = -1; 
}

k = 0;

// loop thru and erase

for(int i = 0; i < length; ++i)
 if(array[i] != -1) 
  array[k++] = array[i];

length = k; // adjust to new length