Remove duplicate lines from a file while preserving order and leaving the last instance of the duplicate in place.
perl -ne 'push @a, $_; $h{$_}++; END{print grep {not --$h{$_}} @a} +' file

For the following file:

cabbage apple banana grape pear banana carrot apple apple banana grape pear banana apple

The output would be:

cabbage carrot grape pear banana apple

So for example the last instance of apple is printed instead of the first. For comparison try the following which leaves the first instance in place:

perl -ne 'print unless $h{$_}++' file

If preserving order isn't important then you could use other system commands (if supported):

sort -u file sort file | uniq

Note: this snippet potentially stores 2 copies of each line in memory so it is inefficient for large files.


In reply to Remove duplicate lines maintaining last-in order by jmcnamara

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