Is there a no-duplicate List implementation out th

Question

I know about SortedSet, but in my case I need something that implements List, and not Set. So is there an implementation out there, in the API or elsewhere?

It shouldn't be hard to implement myself, but I figured why not ask people here first?

Answer 1

I needed something like that, so I went to the commons collections and used the SetUniqueList, but when I ran some performance test, I found that it seems not optimized comparing to the case if I want to use a Set and obtain an Array using the Set.toArray() method, the SetUniqueTest took 20:1 time to fill and then traverse 100,000 Strings comparing to the other implementaion, which is a big deal difference, so If you worry about the performance, I recommend you to use the Set and get a Array instead of using the SetUniqueList, unless you really need the logic of the SetUniqueList, then you need to check other solutions...

The testing code main method:

public static void main(String[] args) {

SetUniqueList pq = SetUniqueList.decorate(new ArrayList());
Set s = new TreeSet();

long t1 = 0L;
long t2 = 0L;
String t;


t1 = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < 200000; i++) {
    pq.add("a" + Math.random());
}
while (!pq.isEmpty()) {
    t = (String) pq.remove(0);
}
t1 = System.nanoTime() - t1;

t2 = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < 200000; i++) {
    s.add("a" + Math.random());
}

s.clear();
String[] d = (String[]) s.toArray(new String[0]);
s.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < d.length; i++) {
    t = d[i];

}
t2 = System.nanoTime() - t2;

System.out.println((double)t1/1000/1000/1000); //seconds
System.out.println((double)t2/1000/1000/1000); //seconds
System.out.println(((double) t1) / t2);        //comparing results

}

Regards Mohammed Sleem http://abusleem.net/blog

Answer 2

You should seriously consider dhiller's answer:

1. Instead of worrying about adding your objects to a duplicate-less List, add them to a Set (any implementation), which will by nature filter out the duplicates.
2. When you need to call the method that requires a List, wrap it in a new ArrayList(set) (or a new LinkedList(set), whatever).

I think that the solution you posted with the NoDuplicatesList has some issues, mostly with the contains() method, plus your class does not handle checking for duplicates in the Collection passed to your addAll() method.

Answer 3

NOTE: it does not take subList implementation into account.

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

public class UniqueList<T> extends ArrayList<T> {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    /** Unique elements SET */
    private final Set<T> set=new HashSet();

    /** Used by addAll methods */
    private Collection<T> addUnique(Collection<? extends T> col) {
        Collection<T> unique=new ArrayList();
        for(T e: col){
            if (set.add(e)) unique.add(e);
        }
        return unique;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean add(T e) {
        return set.add(e) ? super.add(e) : false;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends T> col) {
        return super.addAll(addUnique(col));
    }

    @Override
    public void add(int index, T e) {
        if (set.add(e)) super.add(index, e);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean addAll(int index, Collection<? extends T> col) {
        return super.addAll(index, addUnique(col));
    }

}

Answer 4

Why not encapsulate a set with a list, sort like:

new ArrayList( new LinkedHashSet() )

This leaves the other implementation for someone who is a real master of Collections ;-)

Answer 5

I just made my own UniqueList in my own little library like this:

package com.bprog.collections;//my own little set of useful utilities and classes

import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
/**
*
* @author Jonathan
*/
public class UniqueList {

private HashSet masterSet = new HashSet();
private ArrayList growableUniques;
private Object[] returnable;

public UniqueList() {
    growableUniques = new ArrayList();
}

public UniqueList(int size) {
    growableUniques = new ArrayList(size);
}

public void add(Object thing) {
    if (!masterSet.contains(thing)) {
        masterSet.add(thing);
        growableUniques.add(thing);
    }
}

/**
 * Casts to an ArrayList of unique values
 * @return 
 */
public List getList(){
    return growableUniques;
}

public Object get(int index) {
    return growableUniques.get(index);
}

public Object[] toObjectArray() {
    int size = growableUniques.size();
    returnable = new Object[size];
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        returnable[i] = growableUniques.get(i);
    }
    return returnable;
    }
}

I have a TestCollections class that looks like this:

package com.bprog.collections;
import com.bprog.out.Out;
/**
*
* @author Jonathan
*/
public class TestCollections {
    public static void main(String[] args){
        UniqueList ul = new UniqueList();
        ul.add("Test");
        ul.add("Test");
        ul.add("Not a copy");
        ul.add("Test"); 
        //should only contain two things
        Object[] content = ul.toObjectArray();
        Out.pl("Array Content",content);
    }
}

Works fine. All it does is it adds to a set if it does not have it already and there's an Arraylist that is returnable, as well as an object array.