How in Scala to find unique items in List

Question

How in Scala to find unique items in List?

Answer 1

The most efficient order-preserving way of doing this would be to use a Set as an ancillary data structure:

def unique[A](ls: List[A]) = {
  def loop(set: Set[A], ls: List[A]): List[A] = ls match {
    case hd :: tail if set contains hd => loop(set, tail)
    case hd :: tail => hd :: loop(set + hd, tail)
    case Nil => Nil
  }

  loop(Set(), ls)
}

We can wrap this in some nicer syntax using an implicit conversion:

implicit def listToSyntax[A](ls: List[A]) = new {
  def unique = unique(ls)
}

List(1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4).unique    // => List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)