Unique list item finder
World's simplest list toolThis is a super simple browser-based application that finds the unique items in a list. It works with all data types and returns a new list with only the distinct items in it. You can customize the input and output separators of list items, as well as trim items before comparison and skip empty items. Created by list geeks from team Browserling.
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What is a unique list item finder?
learn more about this toolWith this utility, you can find and extract unique items from a list. If any of the items in the input list appear more than once, then in the output list they will appear exactly once. An extra option "Find Absolutely Unique Items" lets you change this behavior. If you activate this option, then the program will find those items that are absolutely unique in the entire list – meaning items, which have no copies in the list. You may also need the "Case Sensitive Items" option, which allows you to identify capitalized words and lowercase words as two separate words. Sometimes, when working with lists, there is a lot of noise (in form of whitespace characters) around the items. In this case, you can trim all items before they are compared for uniqueness. Trimming involves removing leading and trailing whitespaces so that the potentially invisible whitespaces didn't lead to false results. You can also filter out all the empty items with the length equal to zero. The program works with multitype data lists. They can be lists of numbers, strings, characters, and they can include Unicode glyphs. All data types can be mixed, too. For example, you can have a word list with numbers or an emoji list with digits. To support all these list formats, we developed two list parsing modes. The first mode allows you to separate list items using the entered character. For example, if the input list is semicolon-separated, then you can enter a semicolon in the list item separator field. Similarly, if the list is dash-separated, then you need to enter a dash symbol in the separator option. The second mode allows you to separate the list items using a regular expression. For example, if the input list is comma- and colon-separated, then you can use the regex /[,:]/. You can also immediately reformat the unique output list by setting a new item separator. Listabulous!
Unique list item finder examples
Click to useVehicle Registration Plates
In this example, we find all unique car plate numbers in a long list of vehicle registration plates. As all plates are separated by a comma, we select the mode that separates the list items by a character and enter the comma symbol in the item separator field. As some of the numbers are surrounded by spaces, we activate the trim-items option so that the items are compared only by their real content and not spaces around them. We also enable the skip-empty-items option to avoid processing empty items and set the asterisk symbol to be the new separator in the output list of unique license plates.
PT359D, P0738N, AC3166 , , TS662W, YD122E, TS662W , , PT359D, TS662W, AC3166 , , YD122E, PT359D, S8912X , , YD122E, TS662W, TS662W , , AC3166, PT359D, S8912X,,
PT359D * P0738N * AC3166 * TS662W * YD122E * S8912X
Required options
A specific character is used
to separate list items.
to separate list items.
Specific character or regular
expression.
expression.
Separator of unique items in
the output list.
the output list.
Remove spaces and tabs that
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
Don't include the empty list
items in the output.
items in the output.
Display only those items of the
list that exist in a single copy.
list that exist in a single copy.
Output items with different case
as unique elements in the list.
as unique elements in the list.
Find Products With No Copies
In this example, we load a grocery store shopping list. As it's a list of products for two people, several of the products appear in the list twice. The products that are just one person are entered just once. To quickly find the products that have a single copy, we activate the "Find Absolutely Unique Items" option, and in the output, we find that there are four such products.
Orange
Orange
Avocado
Avocado
Tomato
Tuna
Tuna
Milk
Yogurt
Chicken
Chicken
Salmon
Salmon
Bread
Apple
Apple
Tomato
Milk
Yogurt
Bread
Required options
A specific character is used
to separate list items.
to separate list items.
Specific character or regular
expression.
expression.
Separator of unique items in
the output list.
the output list.
Remove spaces and tabs that
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
Don't include the empty list
items in the output.
items in the output.
Display only those items of the
list that exist in a single copy.
list that exist in a single copy.
Output items with different case
as unique elements in the list.
as unique elements in the list.
Unique Astrological Signs
This example filters a list of astrological signs and finds only the unique values. They are returned in the output as a new list. Since the input list uses both a dash and a tilde character as item delimiter, we switch to the regular expression delimiter mode and enter the regexp /[-~]/ in the separator field. We also remove all leading and trailing whitespaces in the signs and display them one per line.
Leo - Aries ~ Scorpio - Cancer - Aquarius ~ Libra - Pisces ~ Cancer - Libra ~ Gemini - Taurus ~ Taurus - Gemini ~ Virgo - Scorpio - Pisces ~ Leo - Capricorn - Aries ~ Cancer - Capricorn - Taurus ~ Sagittarius - Virgo
Leo
Aries
Scorpio
Cancer
Aquarius
Libra
Pisces
Gemini
Taurus
Virgo
Capricorn
Sagittarius
Required options
A regular expression is used
to separate list items.
to separate list items.
Specific character or regular
expression.
expression.
Separator of unique items in
the output list.
the output list.
Remove spaces and tabs that
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
Don't include the empty list
items in the output.
items in the output.
Display only those items of the
list that exist in a single copy.
list that exist in a single copy.
Output items with different case
as unique elements in the list.
as unique elements in the list.
Case-sensitive Unique Items
In this example, we find the unique elements of a list in a case-sensitive way. We split the list items via the regular expression "\s+" (which means one or more spaces or newlines) and see that some of the items have the same spelling but different meanings (such words are called homographs). Namely, the words "may" and "May" differ only by the first capital letter yet at the same time they have completely different meanings. Therefore, to consider these two items as different items, we turn on the "Case Sensitive Items" option.
Peonies may bloom in May or June
Tulips may bloom in April or May
Peonies may bloom in May or June Tulips April
Required options
A regular expression is used
to separate list items.
to separate list items.
Specific character or regular
expression.
expression.
Separator of unique items in
the output list.
the output list.
Remove spaces and tabs that
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
Don't include the empty list
items in the output.
items in the output.
Display only those items of the
list that exist in a single copy.
list that exist in a single copy.
Output items with different case
as unique elements in the list.
as unique elements in the list.
Find Unique Musical Notes
The input list in this example is very unusual. The values of the list are musical notes that start with a treble clef and the item separator is a five-line staff symbol. To find unique list elements that are notes, we select the split by character mode and enter the symbol "𝄚" in the delimiter option. We get four unique notes in the output (and the starting treble clef) that we separate by the regular space character.
𝄞𝄚♩𝄚♪𝄚♫𝄚♬𝄚♪𝄚♬𝄚♪𝄚♫𝄚♪𝄚♫𝄚
𝄞 ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
Required options
A specific character is used
to separate list items.
to separate list items.
Specific character or regular
expression.
expression.
Separator of unique items in
the output list.
the output list.
Remove spaces and tabs that
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
surround items before
checking if they are unique.
Don't include the empty list
items in the output.
items in the output.
Display only those items of the
list that exist in a single copy.
list that exist in a single copy.
Output items with different case
as unique elements in the list.
as unique elements in the list.
Pro tips Master online list tools
You can pass input to this tool via ?input query argument and it will automatically compute output. Here's how to type it in your browser's address bar. Click to try!
https://onlinetools.com/list/find-unique-list-items?input=PT359D%2C%20P0738N%2C%20AC3166%20%2C%20%2C%20TS662W%2C%20YD122E%2C%20TS662W%20%2C%20%2C%20PT359D%2C%20TS662W%2C%20AC3166%20%2C%20%2C%20YD122E%2C%20PT359D%2C%20S8912X%20%2C%20%2C%20YD122E%2C%20TS662W%2C%20TS662W%20%2C%20%2C%20AC3166%2C%20PT359D%2C%20S8912X%2C%2C&string-separator=true&input-separator=%252C&output-separator=%20%252A%20&trim-elements=true&skip-empty=true&totally-unique=false&case-sensitive=false
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