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Generalizing Complement to handle multiple occurrences of elements

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg112425] Generalizing Complement to handle multiple occurrences of elements
• From: Mark Coleman <markspcoleman at gmail.com>
• Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:38:25 -0400 (EDT)

Greetings,

I'm wondering how one can efficiently generalize the built-in
Complement function to return multiple occurrences of elements. For
instance, the current version generates

a={1,2,2,3,4,4,4,4}
b={3,5,7}

Complement[a,b]={1,2,4}

I'm looking for a way to define

myComplement[a,b]={1,2,2,4,4,4,4}

My current code is very inefficient!

Thanks,

Mark

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Generalizing Complement to handle multiple occurrences
    • From: Leonid Shifrin <lshifr@gmail.com>
  • Re: Generalizing Complement to handle multiple occurrences
    • From: "Niels R. Walet" <niels.walet@manchester.ac.uk>