Get all non-unique values (i.e.: duplicate/more than one occurrence) in an array

Question

I need to check a JavaScript array to see if there are any duplicate values. What\'s the easiest way to do this? I just need to find what the duplicated values are - I don\'

Answer 1

UPDATED: The following uses an optimized combined strategy. It optimizes primitive lookups to benefit from hash O(1) lookup time (running unique on an array of primitives is O(n)). Object lookups are optimized by tagging objects with a unique id while iterating through so so identifying duplicate objects is also O(1) per item and O(n) for the whole list. The only exception is items that are frozen, but those are rare and a fallback is provided using an array and indexOf.

var unique = function(){
  var hasOwn = {}.hasOwnProperty,
      toString = {}.toString,
      uids = {};

  function uid(){
    var key = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2);
    return key in uids ? uid() : uids[key] = key;
  }

  function unique(array){
    var strings = {}, numbers = {}, others = {},
        tagged = [], failed = [],
        count = 0, i = array.length,
        item, type;

    var id = uid();

    while (i--) {
      item = array[i];
      type = typeof item;
      if (item == null || type !== 'object' && type !== 'function') {
        // primitive
        switch (type) {
          case 'string': strings[item] = true; break;
          case 'number': numbers[item] = true; break;
          default: others[item] = item; break;
        }
      } else {
        // object
        if (!hasOwn.call(item, id)) {
          try {
            item[id] = true;
            tagged[count++] = item;
          } catch (e){
            if (failed.indexOf(item) === -1)
              failed[failed.length] = item;
          }
        }
      }
    }

    // remove the tags
    while (count--)
      delete tagged[count][id];

    tagged = tagged.concat(failed);
    count = tagged.length;

    // append primitives to results
    for (i in strings)
      if (hasOwn.call(strings, i))
        tagged[count++] = i;

    for (i in numbers)
      if (hasOwn.call(numbers, i))
        tagged[count++] = +i;

    for (i in others)
      if (hasOwn.call(others, i))
        tagged[count++] = others[i];

    return tagged;
  }

  return unique;
}();

If you have ES6 Collections available, then there is a much simpler and significantly faster version. (shim for IE9+ and other browsers here: https://github.com/Benvie/ES6-Harmony-Collections-Shim)

function unique(array){
  var seen = new Set;
  return array.filter(function(item){
    if (!seen.has(item)) {
      seen.add(item);
      return true;
    }
  });
}