Remove duplicates from list of object

Question

I have MyObject with field: id, a, b, c, e, f and I have List with 500 000 items, now how can I remove all duplicate items with of the same value of the parameter a, c, f?

I am looking for only the fastest and most efficient method.

UPDATE
I implemented comparator

Fields in my class are of different types so I use ToString() . It is good way?
IdLoc , IdMet , Ser are long?
Value is Object
IdDataType is long

class Comparer : IEqualityComparer<MyObject>
{
    public bool Equals(MyObject x, MyObject y)
    {                
        return x.IdLoc == y.IdLoc && x.IdMet == y.IdMet && x.Ser == y.Ser &&
               x.IdDataType == y.IdDataType && x.Time == y.Time && x.Value == y.Value;
    }

    public int GetHashCode(MyObject obj)
    {
        string idLoc = obj.IdLoc.HasValue ? obj.IdLoc.ToString() : String.Empty;
        string idMet = obj.IdMet.HasValue ? obj.IdMet.ToString() : String.Empty;
        string ser = obj.Ser.HasValue ? obj.Ser.ToString() : String.Empty;
        string value = obj.Value != null ?  obj.Value.ToString() : String.Empty;

        return (idLoc + idMet + ser + value + obj.IdDataType.ToString() + obj.Time.ToString()).GetHashCode();
    }
}

Removing duplicates
Elements 566 890
1) Time: 2 sec

DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
List<MyObject> removed = retValTmp.Distinct(new Comparer()).ToList();
double sec = Math.Round((DateTime.Now - start).TotalSeconds, 3);

2) Time: 1.5 sec

start = DateTime.Now;
List<MyObject> retList = new List<MyObject>();
HashSet<MyObject> removed2 = new HashSet<MyObject>(new Comparer());
foreach (var item in retValTmp)
{
    if (!removed2.Contains(item))
    {
        removed2.Add(item);
        retList.Add(item);
    }
}                
double sec2 = Math.Round((DateTime.Now - start).TotalSeconds, 3);

4) Also I tried out this way:

start = DateTime.Now;

var removed3 = retValTmp.Select(myObj => new { myObj.IdLoc, myObj.IdMet, myObj.Ser, myObj.Value, myObj.IdDataType, myObj.Time }).Distinct().ToList();

double sec3 = Math.Round((DateTime.Now - start).TotalSeconds, 3);

Time: 0.35 sec
but returned list is not in my class, and why the number of elements in the list of 1 and 2 is different than the list of 3?

UPDATE2

public int GetDataHashCode(MyObject obj)
{
    long idLoc = obj.IdLoc.HasValue ? obj.IdLoc.Value : 0;
    long idMet = obj.IdMet.HasValue ? obj.IdMet.Value : 0;
    long ser = obj.SerHasValue ? obj.Ser.Value : 0;
    int valueHash = 0;
    if (obj.Value != null)
        valueHash = obj.Value.GetHashCode();
    else
        valueHash = valueHash.GetHashCode();

    return (idLoc.GetHashCode() + idMet.GetHashCode() + ser.GetHashCode() + valueHash  + obj.IdDataType.GetHashCode() + obj.Time.GetHashCode()).GetHashCode();
}

use:

foreach (MyObject daItem in retValTmp)
{
    int key = GetDataHashCode(daItem);
    if (!clearDict.ContainsKey(key))
        clearDict.Add(key, daItem);
} 

Element: 750 000
Time: 0.23 sec!

Answer 1

If what you are looking for is speed, and don't mind using up some memory then I would recommend that you use a HashSet , if you are interested in doing some custom comparison, then you can make an IEqualityComparer<T> , something like this:

var original = new ArrayList(); // whatever your original collection is 
var unique = new HasSet<YourClass>(new MyCustomEqualityComparer());

foreach(var item in original)
{
    if(!unique.Contains(item))
        unique.Add(item);
}

return unique;

the issue here is that you may end up gobbling up twice the original memory.

Update:

I made some extra research and I think you can achieve just what you want by simply doing:

var original // your original data
var unique = new HashSet<YourClass>(origin, new CustomEqualityComparer());

that should take care of removing duplicated data as no duplication is allowed in a HashSet . I'd recommend that you also take a look at this question about GetHasCode implementation guidelines.

If you want to know some more about the HashSet class follow these links:

About HashSet
About IEqualityComparer constructor
IEqualityComparer documentation

hope this helps

Answer 2

One efficient method would be first to to a quicksort (or similar n Log n sort), based on a hash of (a, c, f) and then you can iterate through the resultant list, picking one every time the value of (a, c, f) changes.

That would give an log n speed solution, which is probably the best you can do.

Answer 3

Well you can always use LINQ Distinct() like this :

var matches = list.Distinct(new Comparer()).ToList();

But for Ditsinct() to work you need to impletemnt Comparer for your Class:

class Comparer : IEqualityComparer<MyObject>
{
    public bool Equals(MyObject x, MyObject y)
    {
        return x.a == y.a && x.c == y.c && x.f == y.f;
    }

    public int GetHashCode(MyObject obj)
    {
        return (obj.a + obj.c + obj.f).GetHashCode();
    }
}

Answer 4

Drakko! You can use the Distinct() method to get only the values that has different values for the properties you specify.
You could do something like this:

List<MyObj> list = new List<MyObj>();

//Run the code that is going to populate your list.
var result = list.Select(myObj => new { myObj.a, myObj.c, myObj.f})
                 .Distinct().ToList();

//Result contains the data based on the difference.

Answer 5

Code from this link worked great for me. https://nishantrana.me/2014/08/14/remove-duplicate-objects-in-list-in-c/

public class MyClass
{
public string ID { get; set; }
public string Value { get; set; }

}

List<MyClass> myList = new List<MyClass>();
var xrmOptionSet = new MyClass();
xrmOptionSet.ID = "1";
xrmOptionSet.Value = "100";
var xrmOptionSet1 = new MyClass();
xrmOptionSet1.ID = "2";
xrmOptionSet1.Value = "200";
var xrmOptionSet2 = new MyClass();
xrmOptionSet2.ID = "1";
xrmOptionSet2.Value = "100";
myList.Add(xrmOptionSet);
myList.Add(xrmOptionSet1);
myList.Add(xrmOptionSet2);

// here we are first grouping the result by label and then picking the first item from each group
var myDistinctList = myList.GroupBy(i => i.ID)
.Select(g => g.First()).ToList();