Problem
You want to eliminate duplicate values from a list.
Solution
There are several possible solutions for this problem. Here are some of these:
Using lists:usort
The lists module contains a wealth of list processing functionality. One possible solution to this problem is to use the lists:usort function, which takes a list and returns a sorted copy of the original list, with all duplicates removed:
1> UL = [1,2,8,7,8,10,3,12,3,99,188,3,2,1,3,5,15,72]. [1,2,8,7,8,10,3,12,3,99,188,3,2,1,3,5,15,72] 2> lists:usort(UL). [1,2,3,5,7,8,10,12,15,72,99,188] |
Using the sets Module
Erlang standard libraries includes a module, sets, with a variety of functions related to generating, creating, and manipulating mathematical sets.
10> Set = sets:from_list(UL). {sets,12, 16, 16, 8, 80, 48, {[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[],[]}, {{[],[99,3],[],[],"/274/f",[15],[2],[5],"H/b",[],[],[1],[],[7],"/n",[]}}} 11> sets:to_list(Set). [3,99,12,188,15,2,5,8,72,1,7,10] |
Note that sets:to_list(sets:from_list(L)) produces an unreliably arranged list.
Using a General Balanced Tree Set (gb_set)
Erlang's standard libraries includes an implementation of Professor Arne Andersson's General Balanced Trees. These structures are more costly than sorting lists for small sets, but this is a much more efficient implementation when working with large sets of data.
The gb_set:from_list function will produce an ordered set of elements (dropping duplicates). The set can then be extracted back to a list for other use:
3> GBSet = gb_sets:from_list(UL). {12, {10, {5,{2,{1,nil,nil},{3,nil,nil}},{8,{7,nil,nil},nil}}, {72,{15,{12,nil,nil},nil},{188,{99,nil,nil},nil}}}} 4> gb_sets:to_list(GBSet). [1,2,3,5,7,8,10,12,15,72,99,188] |