Remove line if field is duplicate

Looking for an awk (or sed) one-liner to remove lines from the output if the first field is a duplicate.

An example for removing duplicate lines I've seen is:

awk 'a !~ $0; {a=$0}'

Tried using it for a basis with no luck (I thought changing the $0's to $1's would do the trick, but didn't seem to work).

awk '{ if (a[$1]++ == 0) print $0; }' "$@"

This is a standard (very simple) use for associative arrays.

this is how to remove duplicates

awk '!_[$1]++' file

If you're open to using Perl:

perl -ane 'print if ! $a{$F[0]}++' file

-a autosplits the line into the @F array, which is indexed starting at 0
The %a hash remembers if the first field has already been seen

This related solution assumes your field separator is a comma, rather than whitespace

perl -F, -ane 'print if ! $a{$F[0]}++' file