find if two arrays contain the same set of integers without extra space and faster than NlogN

Question

I came across this post, which reports the following interview question:

Given two arrays of numbers, find if each of the two arrays have the same s

Answer 1

You can try a probabilistic approach by choosing a commutative function for accumulation (eg, addition or XOR) and a parametrized hash function.

unsigned addition(unsigned a, unsigned b);
unsigned hash(int n, int h_type);

unsigned hash_set(int* a, int num, int h_type){
    unsigned rez = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
        rez = addition(rez, hash(a[i], h_type));
    return rez;
};

In this way the number of tries before you decide that the probability of false positive will be below a certain treshold will not depend on the number of elements, so it will be linear.

EDIT: In general case the probability of sets being the same is very small, so this O(n) check with several hash functions can be used for prefiltering: to decide as fast as possible if they are surely different or if there is a probability of them being equivalent, and if a slow deterministic method should be used. The final average complexity will be O(n), but worst case scenario will have the complexity of the determenistic method.