How do I find the duplicates in a list and create another list with them?

Question

How can I find the duplicates in a Python list and create another list of the duplicates? The list only contains integers.

Answer 1

Without converting to list and probably the simplest way would be something like below. This may be useful during a interview when they ask not to use sets

a=[1,2,3,3,3]
dup=[]
for each in a:
  if each not in dup:
    dup.append(each)
print(dup)

======= else to get 2 separate lists of unique values and duplicate values

a=[1,2,3,3,3]
uniques=[]
dups=[]

for each in a:
  if each not in uniques:
    uniques.append(each)
  else:
    dups.append(each)
print("Unique values are below:")
print(uniques)
print("Duplicate values are below:")
print(dups)

Answer 2

Here's a fast generator that uses a dict to store each element as a key with a boolean value for checking if the duplicate item has already been yielded.

For lists with all elements that are hashable types:

def gen_dupes(array):
    unique = {}
    for value in array:
        if value in unique and unique[value]:
            unique[value] = False
            yield value
        else:
            unique[value] = True

array = [1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 6]
print(list(gen_dupes(array)))
# => [2, 1, 6]

For lists that might contain lists:

def gen_dupes(array):
    unique = {}
    for value in array:
        is_list = False
        if type(value) is list:
            value = tuple(value)
            is_list = True

        if value in unique and unique[value]:
            unique[value] = False
            if is_list:
                value = list(value)

            yield value
        else:
            unique[value] = True

array = [1, 2, 2, [1, 2], 3, 4, [1, 2], 5, 2, 6, 6]
print(list(gen_dupes(array)))
# => [2, [1, 2], 6]

Answer 3

def removeduplicates(a):
  seen = set()

  for i in a:
    if i not in seen:
      seen.add(i)
  return seen 

print(removeduplicates([1,1,2,2]))

Answer 4

one-liner, for fun, and where a single statement is required.

(lambda iterable: reduce(lambda (uniq, dup), item: (uniq, dup | {item}) if item in uniq else (uniq | {item}, dup), iterable, (set(), set())))(some_iterable)

Answer 5

You don't need the count, just whether or not the item was seen before. Adapted that answer to this problem:

def list_duplicates(seq):
  seen = set()
  seen_add = seen.add
  # adds all elements it doesn't know yet to seen and all other to seen_twice
  seen_twice = set( x for x in seq if x in seen or seen_add(x) )
  # turn the set into a list (as requested)
  return list( seen_twice )

a = [1,2,3,2,1,5,6,5,5,5]
list_duplicates(a) # yields [1, 2, 5]

---

Just in case speed matters, here are some timings:

# file: test.py
import collections

def thg435(l):
    return [x for x, y in collections.Counter(l).items() if y > 1]

def moooeeeep(l):
    seen = set()
    seen_add = seen.add
    # adds all elements it doesn't know yet to seen and all other to seen_twice
    seen_twice = set( x for x in l if x in seen or seen_add(x) )
    # turn the set into a list (as requested)
    return list( seen_twice )

def RiteshKumar(l):
    return list(set([x for x in l if l.count(x) > 1]))

def JohnLaRooy(L):
    seen = set()
    seen2 = set()
    seen_add = seen.add
    seen2_add = seen2.add
    for item in L:
        if item in seen:
            seen2_add(item)
        else:
            seen_add(item)
    return list(seen2)

l = [1,2,3,2,1,5,6,5,5,5]*100

Here are the results: (well done @JohnLaRooy!)

$ python -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.JohnLaRooy(test.l)'
10000 loops, best of 3: 74.6 usec per loop
$ python -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.moooeeeep(test.l)'
10000 loops, best of 3: 91.3 usec per loop
$ python -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.thg435(test.l)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 266 usec per loop
$ python -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.RiteshKumar(test.l)'
100 loops, best of 3: 8.35 msec per loop

Interestingly, besides the timings itself, also the ranking slightly changes when pypy is used. Most interestingly, the Counter-based approach benefits hugely from pypy's optimizations, whereas the method caching approach I have suggested seems to have almost no effect.

$ pypy -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.JohnLaRooy(test.l)'
100000 loops, best of 3: 17.8 usec per loop
$ pypy -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.thg435(test.l)'
10000 loops, best of 3: 23 usec per loop
$ pypy -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.moooeeeep(test.l)'
10000 loops, best of 3: 39.3 usec per loop

Apparantly this effect is related to the "duplicatedness" of the input data. I have set l = [random.randrange(1000000) for i in xrange(10000)] and got these results:

$ pypy -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.moooeeeep(test.l)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 495 usec per loop
$ pypy -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.JohnLaRooy(test.l)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 499 usec per loop
$ pypy -mtimeit -s 'import test' 'test.thg435(test.l)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.68 msec per loop

Answer 6

>>> l = [1,2,3,4,4,5,5,6,1]
>>> set([x for x in l if l.count(x) > 1])
set([1, 4, 5])