Find the first repeated character in a string

Given a string, find the first repeated character in it. We need to find the character that occurs more than once and whose index of second occurrence is smallest. A variation of this question is discussed here.

Examples:

Input:  ch = "geeksforgeeks"
Output: e 
e is the first element that repeats

Input:  str = "hello geeks"
Output: l 
l is the first element that repeats

Recommended: Please solve it on “PRACTICE ” first, before moving on to the solution.

Simple Solution: The solution is to run two nested loops. Start traversing from left side. For every character, check if it repeats or not. If the character repeats, increment count of repeating characters. When the count becomes k, return the character. Time Complexity of this solution is O(n²)

We can Use Sorting to solve the problem in O(n Log n) time. Following are detailed steps.
1) Copy the given array to an auxiliary array temp[].
2) Sort the temp array using a O(nLogn) time sorting algorithm.
3) Scan the input array from left to right. For every element, count its
occurrences in temp[] using binary search. As soon as we find a characterthat occurs more than once, we return the character.

This step can be done in O(n Log n) time.

An efficient solution is to use Hashing to solve this in O(n) time on average.

Create an empty hash.
Scan each character of input string and insert values to each keys in the hash.
When any character appears more than once, hash key value is increment by 1, and return the character.

C/C++

// CPP program to find the first 
// repeated character in a string 
#include <bits/stdc++.h> 
using namespace std; 
  
// Returns first repeating character in str. 
char firstRepeating(string &str) 
{ 
    // Creates an empty hashset 
    unordered_set<char> h; 
  
    // Traverse the input array from left to right 
    for (int i=0; i<str.length(); i++) 
    { 
        char c = str[i]; 
  
        // If element is already in hash set, update x 
        // and then break 
        if (h.find(c) != h.end()) 
            return c; 
  
        else // Else add element to hash set 
            h.insert(c); 
    } 
  
    // If there was no repeated character 
    return '\0'; 
} 
  
// Driver method to test above method 
int main () 
{ 
    string str = "geeksforgeeks"; 
    cout << firstRepeating(str); 
    return 0; 
} 

Java

// Java program to find the first 
// repeated character in a string 
import java.util.*; 
  
class Main 
{ 
    // This function prints the first repeated 
    // character in str[] 
    static char firstRepeating(char str[]) 
    { 
        // Creates an empty hashset 
        HashSet<Character> h = new HashSet<>(); 
  
        // Traverse the input array from left to right 
        for (int i=0; i<=str.length-1; i++) 
        { 
            char c = str[i]; 
  
            // If element is already in hash set, update x 
            // and then break 
            if (h.contains(c)) 
                return c; 
  
            else // Else add element to hash set 
                h.add(c); 
        } 
  
        return '\0'; 
    } 
  
    // Driver method to test above method 
    public static void main (String[] args) 
    { 
        String str = "geeksforgeeks"; 
        char[] arr = str.toCharArray(); 
        System.out.println(firstRepeating(arr)); 
    } 
} 

Python

# Python program to find the first 
# repeated character in a string 
def firstRepeatedChar(str): 
  
    h = {}  # Create empty hash 
  
    # Traverse each characters in string 
    # in lower case order 
    for ch in str: 
  
        # If character is already present 
        # in hash, return char 
        if ch in h: 
            return ch; 
  
        # Add ch to hash 
        else: 
            h[ch] = 0
  
    return '\0'
  
  
# Driver code 
print(firstRepeatedChar("geeksforgeeks")) 

C#

// C# program to find the first  
// repeated character in a string  
using System; 
using System.Collections.Generic; 
  
class GFG 
{ 
// This function prints the first  
// repeated character in str[]  
public static char firstRepeating(char[] str) 
{ 
    // Creates an empty hashset  
    HashSet<char> h = new HashSet<char>(); 
  
    // Traverse the input array  
    // from left to right  
    for (int i = 0; i <= str.Length - 1; i++) 
    { 
        char c = str[i]; 
  
        // If element is already in hash set,  
        // update x and then break  
        if (h.Contains(c)) 
        { 
            return c; 
        } 
  
        else // Else add element to hash set 
        { 
            h.Add(c); 
        } 
    } 
  
    return '\0'; 
} 
  
// Driver Code 
public static void Main(string[] args) 
{ 
    string str = "geeksforgeeks"; 
    char[] arr = str.ToCharArray(); 
    Console.WriteLine(firstRepeating(arr)); 
} 
} 
  
// This code is contributed by Shrikant13 

PHP

<?php  
// PHP program to find the first repeated 
// character in a string 
  
// Returns first repeating character in str. 
function firstRepeating($str) 
{ 
    // Creates an empty hashset 
    $h = array(); 
  
    // Traverse the input array  
    // from left to right 
    for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($str); $i++) 
    { 
        $c = $str[$i]; 
  
        // If element is already in hash  
        // set, update x and then break 
        if (array_search($c, $h)) 
            return $c; 
  
        else // Else add element to hash set 
            array_push($h, $c); 
    } 
  
    // If there was no repeated character 
    return '\0'; 
} 
  
// Driver Code 
$str = "geeksforgeeks"; 
echo firstRepeating($str); 
  
// This code is contributed by ita_c 
?> 

Output:

Further Optimization : Size of alphabet is typically small and fixed. In case of ASCII, size is 256. So we can create a fixed size array and use character ASCII values as index.

Similar Problem: finding first non-repeated character in a string.

This article is contributed by Afzal Ansari. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.

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