Java: Detect duplicates in ArrayList?

Question

How could I go about detecting (returning true/false) whether an ArrayList contains more than one of the same element in Java?

Many thanks, Terry

Edit Forgot to mention that I am not looking to compare "Blocks" with each other but their integer values. Each "block" has an int and this is what makes them different. I find the int of a particular Block by calling a method named "getNum" (e.g. table1[0][2].getNum();

Answer 1

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Set;

public class FindDuplicateInArrayList {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        Set<String> uniqueSet = new HashSet<String>();
        List<String> dupesList = new ArrayList<String>();
        for (String a : args) {
            if (uniqueSet.contains(a))
                dupesList.add(a);
            else
                uniqueSet.add(a);
        }
        System.out.println(uniqueSet.size() + " distinct words: " + uniqueSet);
        System.out.println(dupesList.size() + " dupesList words: " + dupesList);
    }
}

Answer 2

    ArrayList<String> withDuplicates = new ArrayList<>();
    withDuplicates.add("1");
    withDuplicates.add("2");
    withDuplicates.add("1");
    withDuplicates.add("3");
    HashSet<String> set = new HashSet<>(withDuplicates);
    ArrayList<String> withoutDupicates = new ArrayList<>(set);

    ArrayList<String> duplicates = new ArrayList<String>();

    Iterator<String> dupIter = withDuplicates.iterator();
    while(dupIter.hasNext())
    {
    String dupWord = dupIter.next();
    if(withDuplicates.contains(dupWord))
    {
        duplicates.add(dupWord);
    }else{
        withoutDupicates.add(dupWord);
    }
    }
  System.out.println(duplicates);
  System.out.println(withoutDupicates);

Answer 3

I needed to do a similar operation for a Stream, but couldn't find a good example. Here's what I came up with.

public static <T> boolean areUnique(final Stream<T> stream) {
    final Set<T> seen = new HashSet<>();
    return stream.allMatch(seen::add);
}

This has the advantage of short-circuiting when duplicates are found early rather than having to process the whole stream and isn't much more complicated than just putting everything in a Set and checking the size. So this case would roughly be:

List<T> list = ...
boolean allDistinct = areUnique(list.stream());

Answer 4

Improved code, using return value of Set#add instead of comparing the size of list and set.

public static <T> boolean hasDuplicate(Iterable<T> all) {
    Set<T> set = new HashSet<T>();
    // Set#add returns false if the set does not change, which
    // indicates that a duplicate element has been added.
    for (T each: all) if (!set.add(each)) return true;
    return false;
}

Answer 5

Improved code to return the duplicate elements

• Can find duplicates in a Collection
• return the set of duplicates
• Unique Elements can be obtained from the Set

---

public static <T> List getDuplicate(Collection<T> list) {

    final List<T> duplicatedObjects = new ArrayList<T>();
    Set<T> set = new HashSet<T>() {
    @Override
    public boolean add(T e) {
        if (contains(e)) {
            duplicatedObjects.add(e);
        }
        return super.add(e);
    }
    };
   for (T t : list) {
        set.add(t);
    }
    return duplicatedObjects;
}


public static <T> boolean hasDuplicate(Collection<T> list) {
    if (getDuplicate(list).isEmpty())
        return false;
    return true;
}

Answer 6

Simply put: 1) make sure all items are comparable 2) sort the array 2) iterate over the array and find duplicates