similar items in a list

harry34 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: similar items in a list by broquaint (Abbot) on Jun 05, 2003 at 10:41 UTC
Not wishing to duplicate contributions to this well trodden subject I shall point you towards `perlfaq4`'s How can I remove duplicate elements from a list or array? (thanks to `perldoc -q duplicate`) and a simple search for duplicates. HTH `_________ broquaint`	[reply]
Re: similar items in a list by ViceRaid (Chaplain) on Jun 05, 2003 at 10:47 UTC
In general, use a hash, with your values as the keys, to find unique items. `@array = qw(1 2 3 4 5 5); $hash = { map { $_ => 1 } @array }; my @sorted_unique_values = sort keys %$hash;` [download] Perlfaq lists a more efficient way of doing this for a pre-sorted array ViceRaid updated: added a link to FAQ, since it's FA.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: similar items in a list by daeve (Deacon) on Jun 05, 2003 at 17:34 UTC
I think that there needs to be a term comparable to RTFM concerning Super Search. Maybe -- PUSS -- Please Use Super Search??? As I thought I had seen this particular question (or at least something very similar) recently, I put the title "similar items in a list" into Super Search. The first pass it came up with 29 possibles, second pass 23, third 15, fourth 12, and fith pass showed 4... Now I do realize that all 83 of these found items don't have the exact answer to this querry or even give assistance to locating or developing such, but several of them do. I have found that while going through the chaff to try and locate the one grain of wheat that I am hunting that I usually learn a lot more than I would have if I just asked the question in a new node and depended on the answers given there. What I learn may not be (and usually isn't) directly about the information that I am searching for but it does tend to give me insite to other areas that I would never have thought to ask about otherwise. Guess I'm just beating a dead camel but I've been told that it tenderizes the meat if continued for for an extended period of time. ;-) HTH Daeve	[reply]