Combining two lists and removing duplicates, without removing duplicates in original list

Question

I have two lists that i need to combine where the second list has any duplicates of the first list ignored. .. A bit hard to explain, so let me show an example of what the c

Answer 1

You can also combine RichieHindle's and Ned Batchelder's responses for an average-case O(m+n) algorithm that preserves order:

first_list = [1, 2, 2, 5]
second_list = [2, 5, 7, 9]

fs = set(first_list)
resulting_list = first_list + [x for x in second_list if x not in fs]

assert(resulting_list == [1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 9])

Note that x in s has a worst-case complexity of O(m), so the worst-case complexity of this code is still O(m*n).