I'm trying to create a list which prints out a random name I've attached to a gameobject in unity. How would I go about stopping duplicates?

using TMPro;

public class Names : MonoBehaviour
{
    public List<string> names = new List<string>();
    public TMP_Text text;

    private void Start()
    {
        string wordToDisplay = RandomWord();

        text.text = wordToDisplay;
    }

    private string RandomWord()
    {
        {
            string randomName = names[Random.Range(0, names.Count)];
                       
            return randomName;
        }

    }
}

CodePudding user response：

Use something like this:

private Stack<string> _randomNames = null;
private string RandomWord()
{
    if (_randomNames == null || _randomNames.Count == 0)
    {
        _randomNames = new Stack<string>(names.OrderBy(n => Random.Range(0, int.MaxValue)));
    }
    return _randomNames.Pop();
}

It's effectively ordering the list randomly and then picking a value one at a time.

CodePudding user response：

As Uriil mentioned in the comment you could remove the new name from the list when you call RandomWord to guarantee uniqueness. Here is an example on how to achieve this:

    private string RandomWord()
    {
        {
            int index = Random.Range(0, names.Count);
            
            string randomName = names[index];
            names.RemoveAt(index);
            
            return randomName;
        }

    }