Code RoomFirst repeat value
EasyPrep Room Coding #422

First repeat value

CodingAlgorithms & data structuresEntry–Mid~10 min

Given a list of integers, scan it from left to right and return the first value you encounter for the second time — in other words, the value whose second occurrence has the smallest index. If no value ever repeats, return -1. For example, in [2, 5, 3, 5, 2] the value 5 completes a repeat at index 3, before 2 does at index 4, so the answer is 5. Aim for a single pass.

Implement
first_repeated(nums: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[[2,5,3,5,2]]out5
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

0:00 of about 10 min
InputExpectedGot
[[2,5,3,5,2]]5not run yetsample