php: check if an array has duplicates

Question

I'm sure this is an extremely obvious question, and that there's a function that does exactly this, but I can't seem to find it. In PHP, I'd like to know if my array has duplicates in it, as efficiently as possible. I don't want to remove them like array_unique does, and I don't particularly want to run array_unique and compare it to the original array to see if they're the same, as this seems very inefficient. As far as performance is concerned, the "expected condition" is that the array has no duplicates.

I'd just like to be able to do something like

if (no_dupes($array))
    // this deals with arrays without duplicates
else
    // this deals with arrays with duplicates

Is there any obvious function I'm not thinking of?
How to detect duplicate values in PHP array?
has the right title, and is a very similar question, however if you actually read the question, he's looking for array_count_values.

Answer 1

Find this useful solution

function get_duplicates( $array ) {
    return array_unique( array_diff_assoc( $array, array_unique( $array ) ) );
}

After that count result if greater than 0 than duplicates else unique.

Answer 2

Php has an function to count the occurrences in the array http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-count-values.php

Answer 3

You can do:

function has_dupes($array) {
    $dupe_array = array();
    foreach ($array as $val) {
        if (++$dupe_array[$val] > 1) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Answer 4

Two ways to do it efficiently that I can think of:

1. inserting all the values into some sort of hashtable and checking whether the value you're inserting is already in it(expected O(n) time and O(n) space)

2. sorting the array and then checking whether adjacent cells are equal( O(nlogn) time and O(1) or O(n) space depending on the sorting algorithm)

stormdrain's solution would probably be O(n^2), as would any solution which involves scanning the array for each element searching for a duplicate

Answer 5

count($array) > count(array_unique($array)); 

Will be false if duplicates, or true if no duplicates.

Answer 6

Keep it simple, silly! ;)

Simple OR logic...

function checkDuplicatesInArray($array){
    $duplicates=FALSE;
    foreach($array as $k=>$i){
        if(!isset($value_{$i})){
            $value_{$i}=TRUE;
        }
        else{
            $duplicates|=TRUE;          
        }
    }
    return ($duplicates);
}

Regards!