How do I remove consecutive duplicates from a list? [duplicate]

Answer 1

itertools.groupby() is your solution.

newlst = [k for k, g in itertools.groupby(lst)]

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If you wish to group and limit the group size by the item's value, meaning 8 4's will be [4,4], and 9 3's will be [3,3,3] here are 2 options that does it:

import itertools

def special_groupby(iterable):
    last_element = 0
    count = 0
    state = False
    def key_func(x):
        nonlocal last_element
        nonlocal count
        nonlocal state
        if last_element != x or x >= count:
            last_element = x
            count = 1
            state = not state
        else:
            count += 1
        return state
    return [next(g) for k, g in itertools.groupby(iterable, key=key_func)]

special_groupby(lst)

OR

def grouper(iterable, n, fillvalue=None):
    "Collect data into fixed-length chunks or blocks"
    # grouper('ABCDEFG', 3, 'x') --> ABC DEF Gxx"
    args = [iter(iterable)] * n
    return itertools.zip_longest(*args, fillvalue=fillvalue)

newlst = list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(next(zip(*grouper(g, k))) for k, g in itertools.groupby(lst)))

Choose whichever you deem appropriate. Both methods are for numbers > 0.