Detect the Only Duplicate in a List
You are given a list nums
of length n + 1
picked from the range 1, 2, ..., n
. By the pigeonhole principle, there must be a duplicate. Find and return it. There is guaranteed to be exactly one duplicate.
Bonus: Can you do this in \(\mathcal{O}(n)$` time and `$\mathcal{O}(1)\) space?
Constraints
n ≤ 10,000
https://binarysearch.com/problems/Detect-the-Only-Duplicate-in-a-List
Examples
Example 1
Input
- nums =
[1, 2, 3, 1]
Output
- answer =
1
Example 2
Input
- nums =
[4, 2, 1, 3, 2]
Output
- answer =
2
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