Member Avatar for maxwellp

I have written the following code to return True if the list has any repeating elements and False ow

def has_repeats(L,newlist = None):
	if newlist == None:
		newlist = []
	if len(L) == 0:
		return False
	if L[0] in newlist:
		return True
	else:
		newlist.append(L[0])
		has_repeats(L[1:],newlist)

It is not returning True or False for anything and I have no idea why, please help!

Edited by maxwellp because: n/a
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by TrustyTony
Member Avatar for TrustyTony

You are not returning the value for else branch, the newlist is not really needed, you can check with tail of L.

And in real life you would do:

def has_repeats(L):
    return len(set(L)) != len(L)

with hashable item sequence (no sublists).

My solution:

def has_repeats(L):
    if len(L) < 2:
        return False
    elif L[0] in L[1:]:
        return True
    else:
        return has_repeats(L[1:])
Edited by TrustyTony because: n/a
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