Newbie: Removing Duplicates

I am writing an L-system script.
Main problem I've got a large number of nurbsCircles duplicated. They are craeted at the same point all with slightly different normals.

I have tried using the following code to selct them all

string $tempholder[]=ls -l "nurbsCirlce*";

but it returns nothing

How do I load an array with the names (or a way to reference) all of the nurbsCircles (approx 250)?????

I can understand whats going wrong
To parse it I am getting the size using
int $maxsize=size $tempholder;
which I think is correct.

Cheers for any help

Jo99

Are you sure you have "Circle" spelled right;)
It works if that's the way you named your nurbs circles.

--g