Overview
Introduction
When you're cleaning up a pasted list, knowing which values repeat, and how many times, is often more useful than seeing every single duplicate line individually.
This tool collapses each repeated value down to one summary line with its total count, giving you a quick census of what's duplicated in your list.
What Is Repeating List Item Finder?
A frequency-based repeat detector: it counts every distinct value in your list and keeps only the ones that occur two or more times.
Each qualifying value appears exactly once in the output, annotated with how many times it occurred in the input, e.g. "apple (×3)".
How Repeating List Item Finder Works
The input is split into items using the selected separator, then counted with a running tally keyed by each distinct value.
Values with a tally of two or more are kept, formatted as "value (×count)", and listed in the order they first appeared.
When To Use Repeating List Item Finder
Use it to get a quick summary of which values are duplicated in a pasted list without manually eyeballing hundreds of lines.
It pairs well with Repeating List Item Remover once you've confirmed which values need de-duplicating.
Often used alongside Duplicate List Item Finder, Unique List Item Finder and Unique List Item Remover.
Features
Advantages
- Gives a compact, one-line-per-value summary instead of a long list of raw duplicates.
- Shows exact occurrence counts, useful for spotting outliers or data-entry mistakes.
Limitations
- Doesn't show the position of each occurrence; use List Item Finder if you need that.
- Comparison is exact and case-sensitive; "Apple" and "apple" are treated as different values.
Examples
Best Practices & Notes
Best Practices
- Run this before Repeating List Item Remover to preview exactly which values will be affected by de-duplication.
- Use Popular List Item Finder instead if you want every value's count, not just the repeated ones.
Developer Notes
Frequency counting uses a `Map<string, number>` keyed by the raw item string, incremented via `counts.get(item) ?? 0`, which preserves first-insertion order when iterated for output.
Repeating List Item Finder Use Cases
- Spotting accidental duplicate entries in a pasted spreadsheet column
- Checking how many times a specific tag or ID recurs across a dataset
- Previewing what a de-duplication pass will collapse before running it
Common Mistakes
- Expecting this tool to list every occurrence individually; it deliberately collapses repeats into one summary line per value.
- Assuming whitespace-padded duplicates like "apple" and "apple " will be merged; they're compared exactly as split, with no trimming.
Tips
- If a value you expect to repeat doesn't show up, check for stray trailing whitespace or inconsistent casing in your source data.
- Combine with a custom separator if your list isn't newline- or comma-delimited.