Removing duplicates on a variable without sorting

Question

I have a variable that contains the following space separated entries.

variable=\"apple lemon papaya avocado lemon grapes papaya apple avocado mango banana\"         


        

Answer 1

In pure, portable sh:

words="apple lemon papaya avocado lemon grapes papaya apple avocado mango banana"
seen=
for word in $words; do
  case $seen in
    $word\ * | *\ $word | *\ $word\ * | $word) 
      # already seen
      ;;
    *)
      seen="$seen $word"
      ;;
  esac
done
echo $seen

Answer 2

This pipeline version works by preserving the original order:

variable=$(echo "$variable" | tr ' ' '\n' | nl | sort -u -k2 | sort -n | cut -f2-)