char *data[20];
int i, j, n, unique[20];
n = 0;
for (i = 0; i < 20; ++i)
{
for (j = 0; j < n; ++j)
{
if (!strcmp(data[i], data[unique[j]]))
break;
}
if (j == n)
unique[n++] = i;
}
The indexes of the first occurrence of each unique string should be in unique[0..n-1] if I did that right.