how to remove arraylist duplicate values

Question

I am performing some maintenance tasks on an old system. I have an arraylist that contains following values:

a,b,12
c,d,3
b,a,12
d,e,3
a,b,12

Answer 1

In ArrayList we don't have a chance to remove duplicate elements directly. We can achieve it with sets, because sets don't allow duplicates, so, better to use HashSet or LinkedHashSet classes. See reference.

Answer 2

Create a class to wrap around a row string (triplet) to provide your equality semantics. Implement the equals() and hashCode() methods. Then use the HashSet method to remove duplicates.

Answer 3

Assuming the entries are String. Then you can sort each of the entry and then do the duplicate check. Then you can store the entry in a map and use the contains(key) to see if they exist.

EDIT: added a complete code example.

public class Test {

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Test test = new Test();
        List<String> someList = new ArrayList<String>(); 
        someList.add("d,e,3");
        someList.add("a,b,12");
        someList.add("c,d,3");
        someList.add("b,a,12");
        someList.add("a,b,12");
            //using a TreeMap since you care about the order
        Map<String,String> dupMap = new TreeMap<String,String>();
        String key = null;
        for(String some:someList){
            key = test.sort(some);
            if(key!=null && key.trim().length()>0 && !dupMap.containsKey(key)){
                dupMap.put(key, some);
            }
        }
        List<String> uniqueList = new ArrayList<String>(dupMap.values());
        for(String unique:uniqueList){
            System.out.println(unique);
        }

    }
    private String sort(String key) {
      if(key!=null && key.trim().length()>0){
        char[] keys = key.toCharArray();
        Arrays.sort(keys);
        return String.valueOf(keys);
      }
      return null;
   }
}

Prints:

a,b,12

c,d,3

d,e,3

Answer 4

Wrap the element as "Foo" instead of "String", rest of code 'removeDuplicate' remains:

public class Foo {
    private String s1;
    private String s2;
    private String s3;

    public Foo(String s1, String s2, String s3) {
     this.s1 = s1;
     this.s2 = s2;
     this.s3 = s3;
    }

 @Override
    public int hashCode() {
     final int prime = 31;
     int result = 1;
     result = prime * result + ((s1 == null) ? 0 : s1.hashCode());
     result = prime * result + ((s2 == null) ? 0 : s2.hashCode());
     result = prime * result + ((s3 == null) ? 0 : s3.hashCode());
     return result;
    }

 @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
     if (this == obj)
      return true;
     if (obj == null)
      return false;
     if (getClass() != obj.getClass())
      return false;
     Foo other = (Foo) obj;
     //Notice here: 'a,b,12' and 'b,a,12' will be same
     if(fieldsAsList().containsAll(other.fieldsAsList())){
      return true;
     }

     return false;
    }

 private List<String> fieldsAsList(){
  ArrayList<String> l = new ArrayList<String>(3);
  l.add(s1);
     l.add(s2);
     l.add(s3);
     return l;
 }    
}

Then arList will be ArrayList < Foo>.

Answer 5

Try this simple solution...(No Set interface used)

https://stackoverflow.com/a/19434592/369035