InterviewDB Question

Unique Lines: Return Only Lines That Appear Exactly Once in a File Stream

Question Details

Problem Given a sequence of lines (strings) from a large file or stream, return all lines that appear exactly once, in the order of their first occurrence. Example: Follow-ups What is the time and space complexity of your approach? Can you do it in a single pass? If the file is too large to fit in memory, what external algorithm or data structure would you use (e.g., external sort, counting Bloom filter)? How does case sensitivity affect your solution, and how would you add a case-insensitive mo…

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About This Question

This is a reported interview question from a vanta interview during the onsite round.

It covers the following topics: Coding, Strings, Onsite .

About Vanta Interview Reports

This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Vanta. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.

Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Vanta are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.

For broader preparation context, the Vanta interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.

How To Practice This Type of Question

Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.

Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Vanta reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.

During Your Vanta Round

Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.

The single most predictive failure mode in Vanta reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.