How to cut a part of a string?

Question

I'm trying to cut duplicates from a string i have.

The string looks like this:

word-1\word-2\word-3\word-3\word-3\word-3

And I wish it look like this: (without the duplications).

word-1\word-2\word-3

So far I thought of put the string into an array and split to items by \ . I don't really know how I suppose to cut the duplications. Moreover, I don't know how many duplicates gonna be.

This is what I got so far:

Sub Split_and_remove()
  ' split items on \
  Dim item As String, newItem As String
  Dim items As Variant, newItems As Variant
  item = Sheet1.Range("A1").Value2
  items = Split(item, "\")
  newItems = items(0) + "\" + items(1) + "\" + items(2)
  Sheet1.Range("A4").Value2 = newItems
End Sub

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is an implementation with a collection, so you don't need an external object like a dictionary:

Public Function GetUniqueValues(ByVal valueString As String, ByVal delimiter As String) As String
    With New Collection
        On Error Resume Next

        Dim item As Variant
        For Each item In Split(valueString, delimiter)
            .Add item, item

            If Err.Number = 0 Then _
                GetUniqueValues = GetUniqueValues & item & delimiter

            Err.Clear
        Next item
    End With

    GetUniqueValues = Left(GetUniqueValues, Len(GetUniqueValues) - Len(delimiter))
End Function

It can be used with all variants of VBA, not only Excel.