How to find and return a duplicate value in array

by 
a = ["A", "B", "C", "B", "A"]
a.detect{ |e| a.count(e) > 1 }

I know this isn’t very elegant answer, but I love it. It’s beautiful one liner code. And works perfectly fine unless you need to process huge data set.

Looking for faster solution? Here you go!

def find_one_using_hash_map(array)
  map = {}
  dup = nil
  array.each do |v|
    map[v] = (map[v] || 0 ) + 1

    if map[v] > 1
      dup = v
      break
    end
  end

  return dup
end

It’s linear, O(n), but now needs to manage multiple lines-of-code, needs test cases, etc.

If you need an even faster solution, maybe try C instead.

And here is the gist comparing different solutions: https://gist.github.com/naveed-ahmad/8f0b926ffccf5fbd206a1cc58ce9743e

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