A deduplicating iterator

Implement an iterator (generic) which skips an element if it is equal to the previous element. e.g: AAABBCCCCD, produces ABCD.

Please suggest improvements.

import java.util.Iterator;

public class DeDupIterator implements Iterator {

E next = null;
Iterator itr;

public DeDupIterator(Iterator iter) {
    itr = iter;
    next = itr.next();
}

@Override
public boolean hasNext() {
    if(itr.hasNext())
    if (next != null) {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

@Override
public E next() {
    E item=null;
    while (itr.hasNext()) {
        item = (E) itr.next();
        if (!item.equals(next)) {
            E temp = next;
            next = item;
            return temp;
        }

    }
    next = item;
    return next;
}

@Override
public void remove() {
    itr.remove();
}
}

public boolean hasNext() {
    if(itr.hasNext())
    if (next != null) {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

First, there's inconsistent usage of braces for your block if statements. Second, if you are already keeping track of what is the next element to be returned by your de-dup iterator, wouldn't it be enough to just check against that?

public boolean hasNext() {
    return next != null;
}

A suggestion regarding the remove() implementation: the Javadoc API suggests that it can be called only once per call to next(). Since your implementation of next() is already quite different, you may want to re-consider whether your implementation can be as simple as calling remove() on the underlying iterator. In your example, is it expected to be removing only one 'C' or all 'C's when remove() is called?

StackExchange Code Review Q#49778, answer score: 10