How to remove duplicate lines in Visual Studio Code?

vscode-remove-duplicate-lines.md

If the order of lines is not important##

Sort lines alphabetically, if they aren't already, and perform these steps:
_{(based on this related question: https://stackoverflow.com/q/1573361/3258851)}

1. Control+F

2. Toggle "Replace mode"

3. Toggle "Use Regular Expression" (the icon with the .* symbol)

4. In the search field, type ^(.*)(\n\1)+$

5. In the "replace with" field, type $1

6. Click ("Replace All").

If the order of lines is important so you can't sort##

In this case, either resort to a solution outside VS Code (see here), or - if your document is not very large and you don't mind spamming the Replace All button - follow the previous steps, but in steps 4 and 5, enter these:
_{(based on https://stackoverflow.com/q/48722064/3258851)}

Caution: Blocks for files with too many lines (1000+); may cause VS Code to crash; may introduce blank lines in some cases.

• search: ((^[^\S$]*?(?=\S)(?:.*)+$)[\S\s]*?)^\2$(?:\n)?

• replace with: $1

and then click the "Replace All" button as many times as there are duplicate occurrences.

You'll know it's enough when the line count stops decreasing when you click the button. Navigate to the last line of the document to keep an eye on that.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37992493/how-to-remove-duplicate-lines-in-visual-studio-code

For all those who want Visual Studio Code to sort the opened file alphabetically line by line (required for the first variant described above), here is a useful VS Code extension:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Tyriar.sort-lines

instructions:

1. install the above mentioned plugin
2. Press F1
3. enter "sort"
4. select "sort lines (ascending, case insensitive)"
5. enjoy!

I am pretty confident that sorting lines is a feature available by default, without requiring an add-on.

See: microsoft/vscode#536 (comment)

This is super helpful. Thank you very much 😸

As mentioned on StackOverflow, this is now included in VSCode.