Algorithm help per favore

[Sean Ross]

"Larry" <wrbt at email.com> wrote in message
news:2ec1bc1c.0306180746.159679d6 at posting.google.com...
> I need to take a list (probably 20k to 40k elements) of numbers and
> remove consecutive duplicates. Non consecutive duplicates are ok.
>
> Example: [6,3,3,3,5,7,6,3,4,4,3] => [6,3,5,7,6,3,4,3]
>

# Chris Perkins:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/204297
def thislist():
    """Return a reference to the list object being constructed by the
    list comprehension from which this function is called. Raises an
    exception if called from anywhere else.
    """
    import sys
    d = sys._getframe(1).f_locals
    nestlevel = 1
    while '_[%d]' % nestlevel in d:
        nestlevel += 1
    return d['_[%d]' % (nestlevel - 1)].__self__

def last(sequence):
    "return the last item in list, or empty list"
    if sequence:
        return sequence[-1]
    else:
        return sequence


sequence = [6,3,3,3,5,7,6,3,4,4,3]
filtered = [item for item in sequence if item != last(thislist())]
print filtered

# OUTPUT
#>>> [6, 3, 5, 7, 6, 3, 4, 3]


The idea here is to do something like this:

lastitem = sequence[0]
filtered = [lastitem]
for item in sequence[1:]:
    if item != lastitem:
        filtered.append(item)
    lastitem = item

But here we make use of Chris Perkins recipe to gain access to the list
being contructed by the list comprehension that is filtering our original
sequence.