Removing duplicates from a list collection

Question

Hope someone can help me. I am using c# and I am somewhat new to it. I am loading a text file into my app and splitting the data on \",\" I am reading part of string into a

Answer 1

A simple/dirty example follows:

public List<string> RemoveDuplicates(List<string> listWithDups)
{
   cleanList = new List<string>();
   foreach (string s in listWithDups)
   {
      if (!cleanList.Contains(s))
         cleanList.Add(s);
   }
   return cleanList;
}

As a warning: String.Split on very large strings can cause consume huge amounts of memory and cause exceptions.

Answer 2

Here's an article with some examples and explanations in C#. Basically, you just keep track of the uniques, and check each element.

Alex

Answer 3

If you are targeting .NET 3.5, use the Distinct extension method:

var deduplicated = list.Distinct();

Answer 4

If you load the strings into a Set instead of into a List then duplicates are discarded automatically.