How do I remove repeated elements from ArrayList?

Question

I have an ArrayList, and I want to remove repeated strings from it. How can I do this?

Answer 1

public Set<Object> findDuplicates(List<Object> list) {
        Set<Object> items = new HashSet<Object>();
        Set<Object> duplicates = new HashSet<Object>();
        for (Object item : list) {
            if (items.contains(item)) {
                duplicates.add(item);
                } else { 
                    items.add(item);
                    } 
            } 
        return duplicates;
        }

Answer 2

If you don't want duplicates, use a Set instead of a List. To convert a List to a Set you can use the following code:

// list is some List of Strings
Set<String> s = new HashSet<String>(list);

If really necessary you can use the same construction to convert a Set back into a List.

Answer 3

you can use nested loop in follow :

ArrayList<Class1> l1 = new ArrayList<Class1>();
ArrayList<Class1> l2 = new ArrayList<Class1>();

        Iterator iterator1 = l1.iterator();
        boolean repeated = false;

        while (iterator1.hasNext())
        {
            Class1 c1 = (Class1) iterator1.next();
            for (Class1 _c: l2) {
                if(_c.getId() == c1.getId())
                    repeated = true;
            }
            if(!repeated)
                l2.add(c1);
        }

Answer 4

It is possible to remove duplicates from arraylist without using HashSet or one more arraylist.

Try this code..

    ArrayList<String> lst = new ArrayList<String>();
    lst.add("ABC");
    lst.add("ABC");
    lst.add("ABCD");
    lst.add("ABCD");
    lst.add("ABCE");

    System.out.println("Duplicates List "+lst);

    Object[] st = lst.toArray();
      for (Object s : st) {
        if (lst.indexOf(s) != lst.lastIndexOf(s)) {
            lst.remove(lst.lastIndexOf(s));
         }
      }

    System.out.println("Distinct List "+lst);

Output is

Duplicates List [ABC, ABC, ABCD, ABCD, ABCE]
Distinct List [ABC, ABCD, ABCE]

Answer 5

this can solve the problem:

private List<SomeClass> clearListFromDuplicateFirstName(List<SomeClass> list1) {

     Map<String, SomeClass> cleanMap = new LinkedHashMap<String, SomeClass>();
     for (int i = 0; i < list1.size(); i++) {
         cleanMap.put(list1.get(i).getFirstName(), list1.get(i));
     }
     List<SomeClass> list = new ArrayList<SomeClass>(cleanMap.values());
     return list;
}

Answer 6

If you're willing to use a third-party library, you can use the method distinct() in Eclipse Collections (formerly GS Collections).

ListIterable<Integer> integers = FastList.newListWith(1, 3, 1, 2, 2, 1);
Assert.assertEquals(
    FastList.newListWith(1, 3, 2),
    integers.distinct());

The advantage of using distinct() instead of converting to a Set and then back to a List is that distinct() preserves the order of the original List, retaining the first occurrence of each element. It's implemented by using both a Set and a List.

MutableSet<T> seenSoFar = UnifiedSet.newSet();
int size = list.size();
for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
{
    T item = list.get(i);
    if (seenSoFar.add(item))
    {
        targetCollection.add(item);
    }
}
return targetCollection;

If you cannot convert your original List into an Eclipse Collections type, you can use ListAdapter to get the same API.

MutableList<Integer> distinct = ListAdapter.adapt(integers).distinct();

Note: I am a committer for Eclipse Collections.