List of Numbers

[Alex Martelli]

Jim Richardson wrote:

> On Sat, 05 Apr 2003 20:13:45 +0100,
>  Simon Faulkner <news at titanic.co.uk> wrote:
>> I have a list of about 5000 numbers in a text file - up to 14 digits
>> each.
>> 
>> I need to check for duplicates.
>> 
>> What would people suggest as a good method?
>> 
>> Simon
> 
> I'd use sort|uniq, but I don't know if that's available for MS type osen.

You can get implementations of sort and uniq for MS, but a short
Python script is better IMHO.


> In python, just stuff them all in a dictionary, any repeats, will be
> eliminated. But this is rather crude and probably slow. But it would
> work.

Anything but slow!  Python dictionaries are quite fast.  But removing
duplicates is not the same as 'checking for duplicates' -- Simon
might rather want (e.g.) a list of all numbers that WERE in fact
duplicate.  A script that plays with a Python dict is still no doubt
the right solution, but it's hard to write one without more precise
specifications regarding what is desired.


Alex