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advanced patterns When Merging Two Arrays in Python with Duplicate Elements

πŸ‘€ Views: 76 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-06-14
python arrays duplicates Python

I'm updating my dependencies and I'm wondering if anyone has experience with Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer. I'm trying to merge two lists in Python while also removing duplicates, but I'm working with unexpected behavior. I expected the merged list to contain unique elements only, but it seems some duplicates are appearing. Here’s what I’m doing: ```python list_a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5] list_b = [4, 5, 6, 7] merged_list = list_a + list_b unique_list = list(set(merged_list)) print(unique_list) ``` This should give me `[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]`, but sometimes I see `[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]` and sometimes I see `[1, 2, 3, 5, 4, 7, 6]` when I run it multiple times. I'm using Python 3.9 and I suspect the scenario might be related to how sets handle the order of elements. Is there a way to maintain the original order while still removing duplicates? I've also tried using `dict.fromkeys()` to preserve order: ```python unique_ordered_list = list(dict.fromkeys(merged_list)) print(unique_ordered_list) ``` However, this still gives me a different order than I expect. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way to merge these two lists while ensuring both uniqueness and original order? My development environment is Windows. Thanks in advance! Any help would be greatly appreciated! What are your experiences with this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!