How do i check if an item is duplicated in python?

You can use iteration_utilities.duplicates:

>>> from iteration_utilities import duplicates

>>> list(duplicates([1,1,2,1,2,3,4,2]))
[1, 1, 2, 2]

or if you only want one of each duplicate this can be combined with iteration_utilities.unique_everseen:

>>> from iteration_utilities import unique_everseen

>>> list(unique_everseen(duplicates([1,1,2,1,2,3,4,2])))
[1, 2]

It can also handle unhashable elements (however at the cost of performance):

>>> list(duplicates([[1], [2], [1], [3], [1]]))
[[1], [1]]

>>> list(unique_everseen(duplicates([[1], [2], [1], [3], [1]])))
[[1]]

That's something that only a few of the other approaches here can handle.

Benchmarks

I did a quick benchmark containing most (but not all) of the approaches mentioned here.

The first benchmark included only a small range of list-lengths because some approaches have O(n**2) behavior.

In the graphs the y-axis represents the time, so a lower value means better. It's also plotted log-log so the wide range of values can be visualized better:

Removing the O(n**2) approaches I did another benchmark up to half a million elements in a list:

As you can see the iteration_utilities.duplicates approach is faster than any of the other approaches and even chaining unique_everseen(duplicates(...)) was faster or equally fast than the other approaches.

One additional interesting thing to note here is that the pandas approaches are very slow for small lists but can easily compete for longer lists.

However as these benchmarks show most of the approaches perform roughly equally, so it doesn't matter much which one is used (except for the 3 that had O(n**2) runtime).

from iteration_utilities import duplicates, unique_everseen
from collections import Counter
import pandas as pd
import itertools

def georg_counter(it):
    return [item for item, count in Counter(it).items() if count > 1]

def georg_set(it):
    seen = set()
    uniq = []
    for x in it:
        if x not in seen:
            uniq.append(x)
            seen.add(x)

def georg_set2(it):
    seen = set()
    return [x for x in it if x not in seen and not seen.add(x)]   

def georg_set3(it):
    seen = {}
    dupes = []

    for x in it:
        if x not in seen:
            seen[x] = 1
        else:
            if seen[x] == 1:
                dupes.append(x)
            seen[x] += 1

def RiteshKumar_count(l):
    return set([x for x in l if l.count(x) > 1])

def moooeeeep(seq):
    seen = set()
    seen_add = seen.add
    # adds all elements it doesn't know yet to seen and all other to seen_twice
    seen_twice = set( x for x in seq if x in seen or seen_add(x) )
    # turn the set into a list (as requested)
    return list( seen_twice )

def F1Rumors_implementation(c):
    a, b = itertools.tee(sorted(c))
    next(b, None)
    r = None
    for k, g in zip(a, b):
        if k != g: continue
        if k != r:
            yield k
            r = k

def F1Rumors(c):
    return list(F1Rumors_implementation(c))

def Edward(a):
    d = {}
    for elem in a:
        if elem in d:
            d[elem] += 1
        else:
            d[elem] = 1
    return [x for x, y in d.items() if y > 1]

def wordsmith(a):
    return pd.Series(a)[pd.Series(a).duplicated()].values

def NikhilPrabhu(li):
    li = li.copy()
    for x in set(li):
        li.remove(x)

    return list(set(li))

def firelynx(a):
    vc = pd.Series(a).value_counts()
    return vc[vc > 1].index.tolist()

def HenryDev(myList):
    newList = set()

    for i in myList:
        if myList.count(i) >= 2:
            newList.add(i)

    return list(newList)

def yota(number_lst):
    seen_set = set()
    duplicate_set = set(x for x in number_lst if x in seen_set or seen_set.add(x))
    return seen_set - duplicate_set

def IgorVishnevskiy(l):
    s=set(l)
    d=[]
    for x in l:
        if x in s:
            s.remove(x)
        else:
            d.append(x)
    return d

def it_duplicates(l):
    return list(duplicates(l))

def it_unique_duplicates(l):
    return list(unique_everseen(duplicates(l)))

Benchmark 1

from simple_benchmark import benchmark
import random

funcs = [
    georg_counter, georg_set, georg_set2, georg_set3, RiteshKumar_count, moooeeeep, 
    F1Rumors, Edward, wordsmith, NikhilPrabhu, firelynx,
    HenryDev, yota, IgorVishnevskiy, it_duplicates, it_unique_duplicates
]

args = {2**i: [random.randint(0, 2**(i-1)) for _ in range(2**i)] for i in range(2, 12)}

b = benchmark(funcs, args, 'list size')

b.plot()

Benchmark 2

funcs = [
    georg_counter, georg_set, georg_set2, georg_set3, moooeeeep, 
    F1Rumors, Edward, wordsmith, firelynx,
    yota, IgorVishnevskiy, it_duplicates, it_unique_duplicates
]

args = {2**i: [random.randint(0, 2**(i-1)) for _ in range(2**i)] for i in range(2, 20)}

b = benchmark(funcs, args, 'list size')
b.plot()

Disclaimer

1 This is from a third-party library I have written: iteration_utilities.

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