Duplicates in a string in Python

Question

I realize this question has been asked an infinite number of number of times, but I have spin on it. I am attempting to check a list of elements for duplicates and print either of two responses depending on if there are/are not any duplicates.

I do not wish to wish to remove the duplicates, but simply display a unique message for either of two situations: if there are or are not any duplicates within the string.

I have the following script I created, but it prints seven lines. I wish to reduce to it to one sentence. Thanks.

my_list.sort()

for i in range(0,len(my_list)-1):   
    if my_list[i] == my_list[i+1]: 
        duplicates += 1 
    elif duplicates > 0:
        print "There were duplicates found."
    else:
        print "There were no duplicates"

I spent a lot of time on the internet trying to find a solution for my problem before asking the community--I apologize in advance if this a very, very simple problem.

Move the last four lines out of the for loop

jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe

2014-04-13 18:59:22 +00:00
Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 18:59 — jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe, Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 18:59

bgporter · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-13 19:00:28Z

4

Maybe the most straightforward way is to take advantage of the fact that a set will eliminate any duplicates found in the iterable used to create it. If the length of the set of letters in a string is different than the length of the string, there must be at least one duplicate.

>>> def areDupes(s):
...    return len(set(s)) != len(s)
...
>>> areDupes('abcdef')
False
>>> areDupes('abcdeff')
True

answered Apr 13, 2014 at 19:00

bgporter

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4 Comments

Private Over a year ago

Could you adapt this to make it work also for duplicate words and not just duplicate characters?

anon582847382 Over a year ago

@Private It would work equally fine with a list without changes because both strings and lists are iterable.

bgporter Over a year ago

exactly -- it works with any iterable. To check dupe words in a string, just call areDupes(s.split(' '))

Private Over a year ago

@bgporter That's what I was thinking about.

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