How do I remove duplicates from a C# array?

Question

I have been working with a string[] array in C# that gets returned from a function call. I could possibly cast to a Generic collection, but I was wondering if there was a better way to do it, possibly by using a temp array.

What is the best way to remove duplicates from a C# array?

Answer 1

you can using This code when work with an ArrayList

ArrayList arrayList;
//Add some Members :)
arrayList.Add("ali");
arrayList.Add("hadi");
arrayList.Add("ali");

//Remove duplicates from array
  for (int i = 0; i < arrayList.Count; i++)
    {
       for (int j = i + 1; j < arrayList.Count ; j++)
           if (arrayList[i].ToString() == arrayList[j].ToString())
                 arrayList.Remove(arrayList[j]);

Answer 2

Generic Extension method :

public static IEnumerable<TSource> Distinct<TSource>(this IEnumerable<TSource> source, IEqualityComparer<TSource> comparer)
{
    if (source == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(source));

    HashSet<TSource> set = new HashSet<TSource>(comparer);
    foreach (TSource item in source)
    {
        if (set.Add(item))
        {
            yield return item;
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

List<String> myStringList = new List<string>();
foreach (string s in myStringArray)
{
    if (!myStringList.Contains(s))
    {
        myStringList.Add(s);
    }
}

This is O(n^2), which won't matter for a short list which is going to be stuffed into a combo, but could be rapidly be a problem on a big collection.

Answer 4

-- This is Interview Question asked every time. Now i done its coding.

static void Main(string[] args)
{    
            int[] array = new int[] { 4, 8, 4, 1, 1, 4, 8 };            
            int numDups = 0, prevIndex = 0;

            for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
            {
                bool foundDup = false;
                for (int j = 0; j < i; j++)
                {
                    if (array[i] == array[j])
                    {
                        foundDup = true;
                        numDups++; // Increment means Count for Duplicate found in array.
                        break;
                    }                    
                }

                if (foundDup == false)
                {
                    array[prevIndex] = array[i];
                    prevIndex++;
                }
            }

            // Just Duplicate records replce by zero.
            for (int k = 1; k <= numDups; k++)
            {               
                array[array.Length - k] = '\0';             
            }


            Console.WriteLine("Console program for Remove duplicates from array.");
            Console.Read();
        }

Answer 5

Add all the strings to a dictionary and get the Keys property afterwards. This will produce each unique string, but not necessarily in the same order your original input had them in.

If you require the end result to have the same order as the original input, when you consider the first occurance of each string, use the following algorithm instead:

1. Have a list (final output) and a dictionary (to check for duplicates)
2. For each string in the input, check if it exists in the dictionary already
3. If not, add it both to the dictionary and to the list

At the end, the list contains the first occurance of each unique string.

Make sure you consider things like culture and such when constructing your dictionary, to make sure you handle duplicates with accented letters correctly.

Answer 6

Tested the below & it works. What's cool is that it does a culture sensitive search too

class RemoveDuplicatesInString
{
    public static String RemoveDups(String origString)
    {
        String outString = null;
        int readIndex = 0;
        CompareInfo ci = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.CompareInfo;


        if(String.IsNullOrEmpty(origString))
        {
            return outString;
        }

        foreach (var ch in origString)
        {
            if (readIndex == 0)
            {
                outString = String.Concat(ch);
                readIndex++;
                continue;
            }

            if (ci.IndexOf(origString, ch.ToString().ToLower(), 0, readIndex) == -1)
            {
                //Unique char as this char wasn't found earlier.
                outString = String.Concat(outString, ch);                   
            }

            readIndex++;

        }


        return outString;
    }


    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        String inputString = "aAbcefc";
        String outputString;

        outputString = RemoveDups(inputString);

        Console.WriteLine(outputString);
    }

}

--AptSenSDET