Removing duplicates on a variable without sorting
Solution 1
new_variable=$( awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS=" "}!a[$0]++' <<<$variable );
Here's how it works:
RS (Input Record Separator) is set to a white space so that it treats each fruit in $variable as a record instead of a field. The non-sorting unique magic happens with !a[$0]++. Since awk supports associative arrays, it uses the current record ($0) as the key to the array a[]. If that key has not been seen before, a[$0] evaluates to '0' (awk's default value for unset indices) which is then negated to return TRUE. I then exploit the fact that awk will default to 'print $0' if an expression returns TRUE and no '{ commands }' are given. Finally, a[$0] is then incremented such that this key can no longer return TRUE and thus repeat values are never printed. ORS (Output Record Separator) is set to a space as well to mimic the input format.
A less terse version of this command which produces the same output would be the following:
awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS=" "}{ if (a[$0] == 0){ a[$0] += 1; print $0}}'
Gotta love awk =)
EDIT
If you needed to do this in pure Bash 2.1+, I would suggest this:
#!/bin/bash
variable="apple lemon papaya avocado lemon grapes papaya apple avocado mango banana"
temp="$variable"
new_variable="${temp%% *}"
while [[ "$temp" != ${new_variable##* } ]]; do
temp=${temp//${temp%% *} /}
new_variable="$new_variable ${temp%% *}"
done
echo $new_variable;
Solution 2
This pipeline version works by preserving the original order:
variable=$(echo "$variable" | tr ' ' '\n' | nl | sort -u -k2 | sort -n | cut -f2-)
Solution 3
Pure Bash:
variable="apple lemon papaya avocado lemon grapes papaya apple avocado mango banana"
declare new_value=''
for item in $variable; do
if [[ ! $new_value =~ $item ]] ; then # first time?
new_value="$new_value $item"
fi
done
new_value=${new_value:1} # remove leading blank
Solution 4
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
Solution 5
shell
declare -a arr
variable="apple lemon papaya avocado lemon grapes papaya apple avocado mango banana"
set -- $variable
count=0
for c in $@
do
flag=0
for((i=0;i<=${#arr[@]}-1;i++))
do
if [ "${arr[$i]}" == "$c" ] ;then
flag=1
break
fi
done
if [ "$flag" -eq 0 ] ; then
arr[$count]="$c"
count=$((count+1))
fi
done
for((i=0;i<=${#arr[@]}-1;i++))
do
echo "result: ${arr[$i]}"
done
Result when run:
linux# ./myscript.sh
result: apple
result: lemon
result: papaya
result: avocado
result: grapes
result: mango
result: banana
OR if you want to use gawk
awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS=" "} (!($0 in a) ){a[$0];print}'
user224178
Updated on June 13, 2022Comments
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user224178 almost 2 years
I have a variable that contains the following space separated entries.
variable="apple lemon papaya avocado lemon grapes papaya apple avocado mango banana"
How do I remove the duplicates without sorting?
#Something like this. new_variable="apple lemon papaya avocado grapes mango banana"
I have found somewhere a script that accomplish removing the duplicates of a variable, but does sort the contents.
#Not something like this. new_variable=$(echo "$variable"|tr " " "\n"|sort|uniq|tr "\n" " ") echo $new_variable apple avocado banana grapes lemon mango papaya
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jhwist over 14 yearsSweet :) Thanks for the explanation.
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Mark Edgar over 14 yearsSimply testing for membership is better than counting: awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS=" "} { if (!($0 in a)) { a[$0]; print } }' Or more tersely: awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS=" "} !($0 in a || a[$0])'
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SiegeX over 14 yearsGood solution, but note that this locks you into Bash 3.X due to the '=~' operator.
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SiegeX over 14 years@Mark: Doing a 'time' over a loop of 10,000 iterations shows that yours is just over 3% slower. Not very much but nonetheless, not better. This difference will only become larger as the number of elements grows since your version takes O(n) time while mine is always a constant O(1).
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MiloDC over 5 yearsThis is the only solution here that worked for me. The awk solution still had duplicates. Thanks.
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Gregg over 3 yearsReally nice solution, thanks. Except if duplicates are found at the end, one after the other then it doesn't work. Ex: variable="apple lemon papaya papaya" prints: apple lemon papaya papaya. Whereas if I have: variable="apple lemon papaya papaya mango" then it removes the duplicate papaya and prints: apple lemon papaya mango. Thoughts?
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Gregg over 3 yearsFound the following solution which helped with the problem outlined in my previous comment: stackoverflow.com/questions/46185241/… Thank you for sharing your solution.