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Can you make my code better?

Freddy Manston's photo
Freddy Manston
·Nov 13, 2018

I'm trying to rehone my developer skills after being away for a while, so I've been practicing a bunch of HackerRank style challenges as a start.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask the sort of question I'm about to ask, but if it's not, do let me know of a suitable environment.

I did this challenge recently (description is in the first line of the code below) and I wanted to know if anyone could offer any possible improvements? The focus is mainly on efficiency and not so much style.

Here's the code:

 // Description: Finds the only single element in an array full of doubles and one single. Does it in O(n) time and using no extra memory.
 // E.g. [1, 5, 3, 7, 8, 9, 9, 5, 3, 1, 7] ..computing.. The single element is: 8

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom;

public class OnlySingle {
    public static int[] makeArray() {
        int arr_size = 101;    // Must be an odd number to allow for only one single and all others double
        int[] arr = new int [arr_size];

        // Producing a random number and index for the single element
        int snum = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(1, (arr_size / 2 + 1) + 1);    // The random single element
        arr[ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, (arr_size - 2) + 1)] = snum;    // Insert at random index
        System.out.printf("The array size is: %d%n", arr.length);
        System.out.printf("The random single is: %d%n", snum);

        // Populating the rest of the array with doubles:
        int count = 1;
        int index;
        for(int i = 0; i <= (arr_size / 2 - 1); i++) {        
            if (count == snum) { 
                count++;
            }
            // insert two of the same elements (i.e. count) at random and available indexes.
            index = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, (arr_size - 2) + 1);
            while(arr[index] != 0) {
                index ++;
                if(index >= arr_size) {
                    index = 0;
                }
            }
            arr[index] = count;

            index = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(0, (arr_size - 2) + 1);
            while(arr[index] != 0) {
                index ++;
                if(index >= arr_size) {
                    index = 0;
                }
            }
            arr[index] = count;

            count ++;
        }

        return arr;
    }

    /*
     * Find the single element usign XOR.
     * Since A XOR B XOR A = B, if we XOR every element in the array, we will be left with the single element
     * Thus, works in O(1) time, with no extra memory.
    */
    public static int findSinglesIndex(int[] arr) {
        // Find the index of the non-duplicate number
        int snum = arr[0];

        for(int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) {
            snum = snum ^ arr[i];
            System.out.println(snum);
        }
        return snum;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int[] arr = makeArray();

        for(int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
            System.out.printf("%d: ", i);
            System.out.println(arr[i]);
        }

        System.out.printf("Found the single number to be: %d%n", findSinglesIndex(arr));
    }
}
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