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In the context of a list of items, the process of creating copies of something can be called duplication, but is there a single word for the process of removing duplicates to create a list of unique items?

I'm open to any other ways of expressing this eg:

(Adjective + list) - expressing the state of the list before and after removing duplicates. (for the after state, I feel like I could use unique list, but what would I call it in the before-removal-of-duplicates stage?)

Note that I'm not talking about duplication of the entire list i.e. "duplicated list", I'm talking about a list that has duplicated elements that should be removed

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  • @Edwin Ashworth maybe you could undelete your answer and change it into a Community Wiki post. I think the answer is useful and clearer than "deduplication".
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Apr 2, 2018 at 13:57

1 Answer 1

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According to ODO, there is a predictable answer:

deduplicate [verb] [with object]

Eliminate duplicate or redundant information from (something, especially computer data)

‘they can deduplicate files uploaded by many different users to keep costs lower than otherwise possible’

A Google Ngram shows that it is used (if not all that often). Apparently in bursts, though it's possible that most of the examples in the earlier tranches (if not all) are typos and the like.

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  • I normally see it shortened to “dedupe”.
    – Vicky
    Commented Apr 2, 2018 at 12:35
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    Deduping is used extensively in software programming. The NodeJS community is quite familiar with the term.
    – Mike S.
    Commented Apr 2, 2018 at 13:38

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