Math behind leetcode problem 47 permutations II

Question

Please tell me why the expression i>0 && nums[i] == nums[i-1] && !used[i-1] works on getting unique permutations. And what is the math behind it?
The problem is as follows:
Given a collection of numbers that might contain duplicates, return all possible unique permutations. Example:

Input: [1,1,2]
Output:
[
  [1,1,2],
  [1,2,1],
  [2,1,1]
]

Here is the code:

class Solution {
public:
    vector<vector<int>> permuteUnique(vector<int>& nums) {   
        vector<vector<int>> result; 
        vector<int> temp;
        vector<bool> used(nums.size(), false);
        sort(nums.begin(), nums.end());
        backtrack(nums, temp, result, used);
        return result;        
    }
    
    void backtrack(vector<int>& nums, vector<int>& temp, vector<vector<int>>& result, vector<bool>& used){
        
        if(temp.size() == nums.size()){
            result.emplace_back(temp);
        }else{
            
            for(int i=0; i<nums.size(); i++){
                if(used[i] || i>0 && nums[i] == nums[i-1] && !used[i-1]) continue; 
                used[i] = true;
                temp.push_back(nums[i]);
                backtrack(nums, temp, result, used);
                used[i] = false;
                temp.pop_back();
            }            
        }        
    }    
};

Answer 1

(1) You are sorting the vector so duplicate values will be consecutively present in the vector.

(2) Now we come to the logic behind that condition:

• As the vector can contain the duplicates we should make sure not to repeat the same sequence by starting with the same element again(duplicate)
  • example :
    • 1,1,2 (starting with first one) and 1,1,2 (starting with second one) => both are same (we should make sure this doesn't happen)

Example: In [1, 1, 2]

• If the first element in the sequence is chosen as 1, then we should make sure we are not going to create another sequence starting with another 1 (duplicate of the element).

• So for that, we need to skip the loop for all the consecutive duplicate elements.

• In your case, after creating a sequence staring with first 1, when we enter the loop for the second time we check whether the current element is a duplicate nums[i] == nums[i - 1] (this is sufficient as you have already sorted the vector) and whether the current element is the first element of the sequence !used[i - 1].

  • In your case, due to this condition, the second one cannot be the first element of the sequence.