I might have an array that looks like the following:
[1, 4, 2, 2, 6, 24, 15, 2, 60, 15, 6]
Or, really, any sequence of like-typed portions of data. What I want to do is ensure that there is only one of each identical element. For example, the above array would become:
[1, 4, 2, 6, 24, 15, 60]
Notice that the duplicates of 2, 6, and 15 were removed to ensure that there was only one of each identical element. Does Swift provide a way to do this easily, or will I have to do it myself?
You can roll your own, e.g. like this:
func unique<S : Sequence, T : Hashable>(source: S) -> [T] where S.Iterator.Element == T {
var buffer = [T]()
var added = Set<T>()
for elem in source {
if !added.contains(elem) {
buffer.append(elem)
added.insert(elem)
}
}
return buffer
}
let vals = [1, 4, 2, 2, 6, 24, 15, 2, 60, 15, 6]
let uniqueVals = uniq(vals) // [1, 4, 2, 6, 24, 15, 60]
And as an extension for Array
:
extension Array where Element: Hashable {
func uniqued() -> Array {
var buffer = Array()
var added = Set<Element>()
for elem in self {
if !added.contains(elem) {
buffer.append(elem)
added.insert(elem)
}
}
return buffer
}
}
Or more elegantly (Swift 4/5):
extension Sequence where Element: Hashable {
func uniqued() -> [Element] {
var set = Set<Element>()
return filter { set.insert($0).inserted }
}
}
Which would be used:
[1,2,4,2,1].uniqued() // => [1,2,4]