Combining two lists and removing duplicates, without removing duplicates in original list

Question

I have two lists that i need to combine where the second list has any duplicates of the first list ignored. .. A bit hard to explain, so let me show an example of what the c

Answer 1

You need to append to the first list those elements of the second list that aren't in the first - sets are the easiest way of determining which elements they are, like this:

first_list = [1, 2, 2, 5]
second_list = [2, 5, 7, 9]

in_first = set(first_list)
in_second = set(second_list)

in_second_but_not_in_first = in_second - in_first

result = first_list + list(in_second_but_not_in_first)
print(result)  # Prints [1, 2, 2, 5, 9, 7]

Or if you prefer one-liners 8-)

print(first_list + list(set(second_list) - set(first_list)))

Answer 2

You can use sets:

first_list = [1, 2, 2, 5]
second_list = [2, 5, 7, 9]

resultList= list(set(first_list) | set(second_list))

print(resultList)
# Results in : resultList = [1,2,5,7,9]

Answer 3

resulting_list = list(first_list)
resulting_list.extend(x for x in second_list if x not in resulting_list)

Answer 4

Simplest to me is:

first_list = [1, 2, 2, 5]
second_list = [2, 5, 7, 9]

merged_list = list(set(first_list+second_list))
print(merged_list)

#prints [1, 2, 5, 7, 9]

Answer 5

    first_list = [1, 2, 2, 5]
    second_list = [2, 5, 7, 9]

    newList=[]
    for i in first_list:
        newList.append(i)
    for z in second_list:
        if z not in newList:
            newList.append(z)
    newList.sort()
    print newList

[1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 9]

Answer 6

You can bring this down to one single line of code if you use numpy:

a = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
b = [2,4,7,8,9,10,11,12]

sorted(np.unique(a+b))

>>> [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]