How to remove duplicate characters from a string in Swift - swift

Question

ruby has the function string.squeeze, but I can't seem to find a swift equivalent.
For example I want to turn bookkeeper -> bokepr
Is my only option to create a set of the characters and then pull the characters from the set back to a string?
Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Edit/update: Swift 4.2 or later
You can use a set to filter your duplicated characters:
let str = "bookkeeper"
var set = Set<Character>()
let squeezed = str.filter{ set.insert($0).inserted }
print(squeezed) // "bokepr"
Or as an extension on RangeReplaceableCollection which will also extend String and Substrings as well:
extension RangeReplaceableCollection where Element: Hashable {
var squeezed: Self {
var set = Set<Element>()
return filter{ set.insert($0).inserted }
}
}
let str = "bookkeeper"
print(str.squeezed) // "bokepr"
print(str[...].squeezed) // "bokepr"

Answer 2

I would use this piece of code from another answer of mine, which removes all duplicates of a sequence (keeping only the first occurrence of each), while maintaining order.
extension Sequence where Iterator.Element: Hashable {
func unique() -> [Iterator.Element] {
var alreadyAdded = Set<Iterator.Element>()
return self.filter { alreadyAdded.insert($0).inserted }
}
}
I would then wrap it with some logic which turns a String into a sequence (by getting its characters), unqiue's it, and then restores that result back into a string:
extension String {
func uniqueCharacters() -> String {
return String(self.characters.unique())
}
}
print("bookkeeper".uniqueCharacters()) // => "bokepr"

Answer 3

Here is a solution I found online, however I don't think it is optimal.
func removeDuplicateLetters(_ s: String) -> String {
if s.characters.count == 0 {
return ""
}
let aNum = Int("a".unicodeScalars.filter{$0.isASCII}.map{$0.value}.first!)
let characters = Array(s.lowercased().characters)
var counts = [Int](repeatElement(0, count: 26))
var visited = [Bool](repeatElement(false, count: 26))
var stack = [Character]()
var i = 0
for character in characters {
if let num = asciiValueOfCharacter(character) {
counts[num - aNum] += 1
}
}
for character in characters {
if let num = asciiValueOfCharacter(character) {
i = num - aNum
counts[i] -= 1
if visited[i] {
continue
}
while !stack.isEmpty, let peekNum = asciiValueOfCharacter(stack.last!), num < peekNum && counts[peekNum - aNum] != 0 {
visited[peekNum - aNum] = false
stack.removeLast()
}
stack.append(character)
visited[i] = true
}
}
return String(stack)
}
func asciiValueOfCharacter(_ character: Character) -> Int? {
let value = String(character).unicodeScalars.filter{$0.isASCII}.first?.value ?? 0
return Int(value)
}

Answer 4

Here is one way to do this using reduce(),
let newChar = str.characters.reduce("") { partial, char in
guard let _ = partial.range(of: String(char)) else {
return partial.appending(String(char))
}
return partial
}
As suggested by Leo, here is a bit shorter version of the same approach,
let newChar = str.characters.reduce("") { $0.range(of: String($1)) == nil ? $0.appending(String($1)) : $0 }

Answer 5

Just Another solution
let str = "Bookeeper"
let newChar = str.reduce("" , {
if $0.contains($1) {
return "\($0)"
} else {
return "\($0)\($1)"
}
})
print(str.replacingOccurrences(of: " ", with: ""))

Answer 6

Use filter and contains to remove duplicate values
let str = "bookkeeper"
let result = str.filter{!result.contains($0)}
print(result) //bokepr