another question about finding duplicates

[Klaus Major]

Hi Peter,

> There's a file which goes roughly:
>
> 1	anything
> 2	anything
> 3	anything
> 4	anything
>
> etc
>
> It can always be sorted by the first item.  Sometimes a duplicate  
> entry will
> creep in, so the file will look
>
> 1	anything
> 2	anything
> 2	anything
> 3	anything
> 4	anything
>
> or perhaps
>
> 1	anything
> 2	anything
> 3	anything
> 3	anything
> 4	anything
>
> What's the quickest way of checking for this condition  - when the  
> two items 1
> of any two adjacent lines are identical?  I have found a brute force  
> way to
> do it using filter, but it is really clunky and slow.

use a very smart "repeat for each" loop ;-)

on mouseUp
   put fld 1 into tList
   ## or whatever...

   set itemdel to TAB

   ## so we chan check the first time...
   put empty into tPrev_item1
   repeat for each line i in tList
     if item 1 of i <> tPrev_item1 then
       put i & CR after tNewlist
     end if

     ## so we can check this item of the line BEFORE the actual line  
(i) :-)
     put item 1 of i into tPrev_item1
   end repeat

   ## get rid of trailing CR
   delete char -1 of tNewlist
   put tNewlist into fld 2
end mouseUp

Tested and works.
Of course you MUST sort the lines first by item 1!

> Cheers
>
> Peter

Regards

Klaus Major
klaus at major-k.de
http://www.major-k.de