Deduplicate Vulnerability Reports | Dataford Interview Questions

Implement a function to deduplicate a list of incoming vulnerability reports efficiently.

Each report is a dictionary containing a unique fingerprint string and other fields. Treat reports with the same fingerprint as duplicates, retain the first occurrence, and preserve input order. Return a new list without modifying the input.

Function signature: deduplicate_reports(reports)

Input is a list of dictionaries. Output is a list of dictionaries.

Constraints

0 <= len(reports) <= 500
Each report is a dictionary containing a string key named fingerprint.
Fingerprints are hashable strings.
The input list must not be modified.
When duplicates exist, retain the first occurrence.

Function Signature

def deduplicate_reports(reports):

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