How do I find the duplicates in a list and create

Question

How can I find the duplicates in a Python list and create another list of the duplicates? The list only contains integers.

Answer 1

One line solution:

set([i for i in list if sum([1 for a in list if a == i]) > 1])

Answer 2

Here's a fast generator that uses a dict to store each element as a key with a boolean value for checking if the duplicate item has already been yielded.

For lists with all elements that are hashable types:

def gen_dupes(array):
    unique = {}
    for value in array:
        if value in unique and unique[value]:
            unique[value] = False
            yield value
        else:
            unique[value] = True

array = [1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 6]
print(list(gen_dupes(array)))
# => [2, 1, 6]

For lists that might contain lists:

def gen_dupes(array):
    unique = {}
    for value in array:
        is_list = False
        if type(value) is list:
            value = tuple(value)
            is_list = True

        if value in unique and unique[value]:
            unique[value] = False
            if is_list:
                value = list(value)

            yield value
        else:
            unique[value] = True

array = [1, 2, 2, [1, 2], 3, 4, [1, 2], 5, 2, 6, 6]
print(list(gen_dupes(array)))
# => [2, [1, 2], 6]

Answer 3

the third example of the accepted answer give an erroneous answer and does not attempt to give duplicates. Here is the correct version :

number_lst = [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, ...]

seen_set = set()
duplicate_set = set(x for x in number_lst if x in seen_set or seen_set.add(x))
unique_set = seen_set - duplicate_set

Answer 4

>>> l = [1,2,3,4,4,5,5,6,1]
>>> set([x for x in l if l.count(x) > 1])
set([1, 4, 5])

Answer 5

A bit late, but maybe helpful for some. For a largish list, I found this worked for me.

l=[1,2,3,5,4,1,3,1]
s=set(l)
d=[]
for x in l:
    if x in s:
        s.remove(x)
    else:
        d.append(x)
d
[1,3,1]

Shows just and all duplicates and preserves order.

Answer 6

Very simple and quick way of finding dupes with one iteration in Python is:

testList = ['red', 'blue', 'red', 'green', 'blue', 'blue']

testListDict = {}

for item in testList:
  try:
    testListDict[item] += 1
  except:
    testListDict[item] = 1

print testListDict

Output will be as follows:

>>> print testListDict
{'blue': 3, 'green': 1, 'red': 2}

This and more in my blog http://www.howtoprogramwithpython.com