C program to find the unique element in an array

In this article we will learn to implement a C program to find the unique element in an array. A C program is provided below to print the unique element in the given array.

Note: This program works only when the values are repeated two times and when there is only one unique value.

Program is as follows:

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
	int n;
	printf("Enter array size: ");
	scanf("%d", &n);
	int a[n];
	printf("Enter %d numbers: ", n);
	for(int i=0; i<n; i++)
		scanf("%d", &a[i]);
	int temp = a[0];
	for(int i=1; i<n; i++)
	{
		temp = temp ^ a[i];
	}
	printf("Unique element in the array is: %d", temp);
	return 0;
}

Input and output for the above program is as follows:

Enter array size: 5
Enter 5 numbers: 1 2 3 2 1
Unique element in the array is: 3

Suryateja Pericherla

Suryateja Pericherla, at present is a Research Scholar (full-time Ph.D.) in the Dept. of Computer Science & Systems Engineering at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. Previously worked as an Associate Professor in the Dept. of CSE at Vishnu Institute of Technology, India.

He has 11+ years of teaching experience and is an individual researcher whose research interests are Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Computer Security, Network Security and Blockchain.

He is a member of professional societies like IEEE, ACM, CSI and ISCA. He published several research papers which are indexed by SCIE, WoS, Scopus, Springer and others.