More elegant way to check for duplicates in C++ array?

You could sort the array in O(nlog(n)), then simply look until the next number. That is substantially faster than your O(n^2) existing algorithm. The code is also a lot cleaner. Your code also doesn't ensure no duplicates were inserted when they were re-entered. You need to prevent duplicates from existing in the first place.

std::sort(userNumbers.begin(), userNumbers.end());
for(int i = 0; i < userNumbers.size() - 1; i++) {
    if (userNumbers[i] == userNumbers[i + 1]) {
        userNumbers.erase(userNumbers.begin() + i);
        i--;
    }
}

I also second the reccomendation to use a std::set - no duplicates there.

The following solution is based on sorting the numbers and then removing the duplicates:

#include <algorithm>

int main()
{
    int userNumbers[6];

    // ...

    int* end = userNumbers + 6;
    std::sort(userNumbers, end);
    bool containsDuplicates = (std::unique(userNumbers, end) != end);
}

Indeed, the fastest and as far I can see most elegant method is as advised above:

std::vector<int> tUserNumbers;
// ...
std::set<int> tSet(tUserNumbers.begin(), tUserNumbers.end());
std::vector<int>(tSet.begin(), tSet.end()).swap(tUserNumbers);

It is O(n log n). This however does not make it, if the ordering of the numbers in the input array needs to be kept... In this case I did:

    std::set<int> tTmp;
    std::vector<int>::iterator tNewEnd = 
        std::remove_if(tUserNumbers.begin(), tUserNumbers.end(), 
        [&tTmp] (int pNumber) -> bool {
            return (!tTmp.insert(pNumber).second);
    });
    tUserNumbers.erase(tNewEnd, tUserNumbers.end());

which is still O(n log n) and keeps the original ordering of elements in tUserNumbers.

Cheers,

Paul