这样可以解决以下问题:

private List<SomeClass> clearListFromDuplicateFirstName(List<SomeClass> list1) {

     Map<String, SomeClass> cleanMap = new LinkedHashMap<String, SomeClass>();
     for (int i = 0; i < list1.size(); i++) {
         cleanMap.put(list1.get(i).getFirstName(), list1.get(i));
     }
     List<SomeClass> list = new ArrayList<SomeClass>(cleanMap.values());
     return list;
}

代码:

List<String> duplicatList = new ArrayList<String>();
duplicatList = Arrays.asList("AA","BB","CC","DD","DD","EE","AA","FF");
//above AA and DD are duplicate
Set<String> uniqueList = new HashSet<String>(duplicatList);
duplicatList = new ArrayList<String>(uniqueList); //let GC will doing free memory
System.out.println("Removed Duplicate : "+duplicatList);

注意:肯定会有内存开销。

public Set<Object> findDuplicates(List<Object> list) {
        Set<Object> items = new HashSet<Object>();
        Set<Object> duplicates = new HashSet<Object>();
        for (Object item : list) {
            if (items.contains(item)) {
                duplicates.add(item);
                } else { 
                    items.add(item);
                    } 
            } 
        return duplicates;
        }

还有来自Guava的ImmutableSet作为一个选项(这里是文档):

ImmutableSet.copyOf(list);

你也可以这样做，保持秩序:

// delete duplicates (if any) from 'myArrayList'
myArrayList = new ArrayList<String>(new LinkedHashSet<String>(myArrayList));

    ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
    HashSet<String> unique = new LinkedHashSet<String>();
    HashSet<String> dup = new LinkedHashSet<String>();
    boolean b = false;
    list.add("Hello");
    list.add("Hello");
    list.add("how");
    list.add("are");
    list.add("u");
    list.add("u");

    for(Iterator iterator= list.iterator();iterator.hasNext();)
    {
        String value = (String)iterator.next();
        System.out.println(value);

        if(b==unique.add(value))
            dup.add(value);
        else
            unique.add(value);


    }
    System.out.println(unique);
    System.out.println(dup);