有没有办法在 STRING 数组中找到最常见的元素？

Question

I have this code below, but it works with integers. I am wanting to get the same thing working for a string array. In particular if say there were names to a string array like 'char []a = "Sparky", "Mary", "Sparky", "John", "Betsy" ', how to get Sparky selected.

    int[] a
    int count = 1, tempCount;
    int popular = a[0];
    int temp = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < (a.length - 1); i++)
    {
      temp = a[i];
      tempCount = 0;
      for (int j = 1; j < a.length; j++)
      {
        if (temp == a[j])
          tempCount++;
      }
      if (tempCount > count)
      {
        popular = temp;
        count = tempCount;
      }
    }
    return popular;

Answer 1

A simple way to do this is sort the array (eg using the standard function qsort() ) and then iterate over it, keeping track of:

1. the most common string you've seen so far,
2. how many times you've seen the most common string,
3. the latest string you've seen,
4. how many times you've seen the latest string.

If (4) exceeds (2), you update (1).

This requires on aeverage O(n log n) time and O(log n) to sort the array and O(n) to scan it as described.