Thread: Identify maximum distance element from String array

I have a requirement where I have to find an element from an array that has maximum distance in occurrence.

If there are two terms that were equally searched, the return term has the longest distance between when it was first and last searched.
Given the following array
[‘C++’, ‘Java’, ‘C#’, ‘C#’, ‘Java’, ‘Python’, ‘C#’, ‘Java’]
Our Program should return “Most searched term is Java”

Note: Both ‘Java’ and ‘C#’ were searched 3 times, but the program should return ‘Java’ as distance
between its first and last search is greater than that of ‘C#’.

I tried searching google, I can find the distance (6) but couldn't return the value (Java).

With this code, I can find the difference in index position but couldn't catch the value.


public class mstry {

public static void main (String[] args){
String[] a ={"C++", "Java", "C#", "C#", "Java", "Python", "C#", "Java"};

int maxDist = 0;
for(int i=0; i<a.length; i++)
{
int firstOcc = -1;
int lastOcc = -1;

for(int j=0; j<a.length; j++)
{
if(a[i] == a[j])
{
if(firstOcc == -1)
firstOcc = lastOcc = j;
else
lastOcc = j;
}
}
if(lastOcc - firstOcc > maxDist)
maxDist = lastOcc - firstOcc;
}
System.out.println(maxDist);
}
}

Array = [‘C++’, ‘Java’, ‘C#’, ‘C#’, ‘Java’, ‘Python’, ‘C#’, ‘Java’]

Steps:

1. Find the maximum occurrence of the element; in this case, we have 2 elements Java and C# they have maximum occurrence 3
2. Then, find 1st and last occurrence of the elements (Java and C#) position
3. Now subtract the first occurrence index from the last occurrence index for Java, same for C#
4. Print the max difference which is 6 for Java.

Here, I want to print Java.