Re: Remove Duplicates from Array

[dragonchild]

in reply to Remove Duplicates from Array

Don't do that. Use List::MoreUtils and the uniq() function. uniq() will work in cases where yours won't, such as lists of objects and other edge cases. Plus, List::MoreUtils has a ton of really good functions to have on hand.

[mpeever]

Additionally, List::MoreUtils uniq() will maintain your list order. Using a temporary hash is tempting, but it will almost certainly change the order of elements.

[linuxer]

And List::MoreUtils::uniq can be faster as it tries to load a library to implement its functionality via DynaLoader. If that fails it implements a plain perl way.

In my test (linux, perl 5.8.8 List::MoreUtils 0.21) the original List::MoreUtils::uniq is about 400% faster than my perl implementation.

If I rename the library, so List::MoreUtils must rely on its perl implementation, my solution is about 20% - 25% faster.

I don't want to argue against List::MoreUtils; but now I wonder about these two (perl) solutions:

# presented in perlfaq4 - How can I remove duplicate elements from a l
+ist or array?
sub my_uniq {
  my %h;
  grep { !$h{$_}++ } @_;
}

# vs.

# List::MoreUtils::uniq
sub LM_uniq {
  my %h;
  map { $h{$_}++ == 0 ? $_ : () } @_;
}

I can't recognize an advantage in the usage of map and the ternary operator.

edit: text refined

[mpeever]

Well looky there... you know, it never occurred to me to put an empty list into a list with map to skip an entry. I was thinking in terms of Lisp, where adding '() gives you a nil entry. I assumed the result would have been to add 0 or something, even though I knew

map {  ( 0..$_ ) } ( 1..3 );

yields

(0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3)

Cool.

[JadeNB]

# List::MoreUtils::uniq
sub LM_uniq {
  my %h;
  map { $h{$_}++ == 0 ? $_ : () } @_;
}

This seems like a strange construction (and yet, as you point out, it's what's in the List::MoreUtils source). Surely $h{$_}++ == 0 is the same as ! $h{$_}++ in this setting? I thought the main point of using the List::MoreUtils uniq was to avoid edge cases, but this seems to do nothing but replace a grep with an essentially equivalent map. (In particular, it doesn't do anything to avoid stringification of objects.)