"Collapsing" a list into a list of changes

[Mike C. Fletcher]

Alan McIntyre wrote:
...

> I have a list of items that has contiguous repetitions of values, but 
> the number and location of the repetitions is not important, so I just 
> need to strip them out.  For example, if my original list is 
> [0,0,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,2,2,2,4,4,4,5], I want to end up with 
> [0,1,2,3,2,4,5].

...

> Is there an elegant way to do this, or should I just stick with the 
> code above?

 >>> def changes( dataset ):
...     last = None
...     for value in dataset:
...         if value != last:
...             yield value
...         last = value
...        
 >>> print list(changes(data ))

which is quite readable/elegant IMO.

Have fun,
Mike

________________________________________________
  Mike C. Fletcher
  Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
  http://www.vrplumber.com
  http://blog.vrplumber.com
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