The interface set does not allow duplicate elements. The add() method of this interface accepts elements and adds to the Set object, if the addition is successful it returns true if you try to add an existing element using this method, the addition operations fails to return false.
Therefore, to remove redundant elements of an ArrayList object −
Get/create the required ArrayList.
Create an empty set object.
Try to add all the elements of the ArrayList object to set objectives.
Clear the contents of the ArrayList using the clear() method.
Now, using the addAll() method add the contents of the set object to the ArrayList again.
Example
import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.HashSet; import java.util.Iterator; import java.util.Set; public class RemovingDuplicates { public static void main(String[] args){ //Instantiating an ArrayList object ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(); list.add("JavaFX"); list.add("Java"); list.add("JavaFX"); list.add("OpenCV"); list.add("Java"); list.add("JOGL"); list.add("JOGL"); list.add("HBase"); list.add("Flume"); list.add("HBase"); list.add("Impala"); System.out.println("Contents of the Array List : \n"+list); //Retrieving Iterator object of the ArrayList class Iterator<String> it = list.iterator(); //Creating an empty Set object Set<String> set = new HashSet<String>(); //Adding elements of the ArrayList to the Set object while(it.hasNext()) { set.add(it.next()); } //Removing all the elements from the ArrayList list.clear(); //Adding elements of the set back to the list list.addAll(set); System.out.println("Contents of the Array List after removing duplicate elements: \n"+list); } }
Output
Contents of the Array List : [JavaFX, Java, JavaFX, OpenCV, Java, JOGL, JOGL, HBase, Flume, HBase, Impala] Contents of the Array List after removing duplicate elements: [JavaFX, Java, OpenCV, JOGL, Flume, Impala, HBase]