Finding The First Non-repeating Character algorithm Swift 4 (Looping over string only once) - swift

Question

I am trying to solve code fights interview practice questions, but I am stuck on how to solve this particular problem in swift. My first thought was to use a dictionary with the counts of each character, but then I would have to iterate over the string again to compare, so that doesn't work per the restrictions. Any help would be good. Thank you. Here is the problem and requirements:
Note: Write a solution that only iterates over the string once and uses O(1) additional memory, since this is what you would be asked to do during a real interview.
Given a string s, find and return the first instance of a non-repeating character in it. If there is no such character, return '_'
Here is the code I started with (borrowed from another post)
func firstNotRepeatingCharacter(s: String) -> Character {
var countHash:[Character:Int] = [:]
for character in s {
countHash[character] = (countHash[character] ?? 0) + 1
}
let nonRepeatingCharacters = s.filter({countHash[$0] == 1})
let firstNonRepeatingCharacter = nonRepeatingCharacters.first!
return firstNonRepeatingCharacter
}
firstNotRepeatingCharacter(s:"abacabad")

Answer 1

You can create a dictionary to store the occurrences and use first(where:) method to return the first occurrence that happens only once:
Swift 4
func firstNotRepeatingCharacter(s: String) -> Character {
var occurrences: [Character: Int] = [:]
s.forEach{ occurrences[$0, default: 0] += 1 }
return s.first{ occurrences[$0] == 1 } ?? "_"
}
Swift 3
func firstNotRepeatingCharacter(s: String) -> Character {
var occurrences: [Character:Int] = [:]
s.characters.forEach{ occurrences[$0] = (occurrences[$0] ?? 0) + 1}
return s.characters.first{ occurrences[$0] == 1 } ?? "_"
}
Another option iterating the string in reversed order and using an array of 26 elements to store the characters occurrences
func firstNotRepeatingCharacter(s: String) -> Character {
var chars = Array(repeating: 0, count: 26)
var characters: [Character] = []
var charIndex = 0
var strIndex = 0
s.characters.reversed().forEach {
let index = Int(String($0).unicodeScalars.first!.value) - 97
chars[index] += 1
if chars[index] == 1 && strIndex >= charIndex {
characters.append($0)
charIndex = strIndex
}
strIndex += 1
}
return characters.reversed().first { chars[Int(String($0).unicodeScalars.first!.value) - 97] == 1 } ?? "_"
}

Answer 2

Use a dictionary to store the character counts as well as where they were first encountered. Then, loop over the dictionary (which is constant in size since there are only so many unique characters in the input string, thus also takes constant time to iterate) and find the earliest occurring character with a count of 1.
func firstUniqueCharacter(in s: String) -> Character
{
var characters = [Character: (count: Int, firstIndex: Int)]()
for (i, c) in s.characters.enumerated()
{
if let t = characters[c]
{
characters[c] = (t.count + 1, t.firstIndex)
}
else
{
characters[c] = (1, i)
}
}
var firstUnique = (character: Character("_"), index: Int.max)
for (k, v) in characters
{
if v.count == 1 && v.firstIndex <= firstUnique.index
{
firstUnique = (k, v.firstIndex)
}
}
return firstUnique.character
}

Answer 3

Swift
Use dictionary, uniqueCharacter optional variable with unique characters array to store all uniquely present characters in the string , every time duplication of characters found should delete that character from unique characters array and same time it is the most first character then should update the dictionary with its count incremented , refer following snippet , how end of the iteration through all characters gives a FIRST NON REPEATED CHARACTER in given String. Refer following code to understand it properly
func findFirstNonRepeatingCharacter(string:String) -> Character?{
var uniqueChars:[Character] = []
var uniqueChar:Character?
var chars = string.lowercased().characters
var charWithCount:[Character:Int] = [:]
for char in chars{
if let count = charWithCount[char] { //amazon
charWithCount[char] = count+1
if char == uniqueChar{
uniqueChars.removeFirst()
uniqueChar = uniqueChars.first
}
}else{
charWithCount[char] = 1
uniqueChars.append(char)
if uniqueChar == nil{
uniqueChar = char
}
}
}
return uniqueChar
}
// Use
findFirstNonRepeatingCharacter(string: "eabcdee")