Best way to find unique items in a list

[Alex]

How about the following:

import operator

def unique_elements(l):
    
    d = {}
    length = len(l)
    map(operator.setitem, length * [d], l, length * [None])
    return d.keys ()

test_list = ['Max','Gitte','Magnus','Caroline','Clara','Max','Gitte']

print unique_elements(test_list)


This returns ['Magnus', 'Gitte', 'Caroline', 'Clara', 'Max'].

You could easily sort the result if you want that.

You might also want to check out kjbuckets, which provides a set type.

Alex.