How to Remove Specific Element from an Array in C - Step by Step Examples

How to Remove Specific Element from an Array in C ?

Answer

To remove a specific element from an array in C, you can shift the elements after the element to be removed and reduce the size of the array.

✐ Examples

1 Remove Element by shifting elements

In this example,

We create an array named `numbers` with elements including the one to be removed.
We find the index of the element to be removed.
We shift the elements after the index one position to the left to overwrite the element to be removed.
We reduce the size of the array by one.
Finally, we get an array without the specific element.

C Program

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    int numbers[] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
    int size = sizeof(numbers) / sizeof(numbers[0]);
    int elementToRemove = 3;
    int indexToRemove = -1;
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        if (numbers[i] == elementToRemove) {
            indexToRemove = i;
            break;
        }
    }
    if (indexToRemove != -1) {
        for (int i = indexToRemove; i < size - 1; i++) {
            numbers[i] = numbers[i + 1];
        }
        size--;
    }
    printf("Array after removing %d:", elementToRemove);
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        printf(" %d", numbers[i]);
    }
    return 0;
}

Output

Array after removing 3: 1 2 4 5

Summary

In this tutorial, we learned How to Remove Specific Element from an Array in C language with well detailed examples.

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