Check if two arrays have the same contents (in any order)

Question

I\'m using Ruby 1.8.6 with Rails 1.2.3, and need to determine whether two arrays have the same elements, regardless of whether or not they\'re in the same order. One of the

Answer 1

Speed comparsions

require 'benchmark/ips'
require 'set'

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
b = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Benchmark.ips do |x|
  x.report('sort')   { a.sort == b.sort }  
  x.report('sort!')  { a.sort! == b.sort! }  
  x.report('to_set') { a.to_set == b.to_set }  
  x.report('minus')  { ((a - b) + (b - a)).empty? }  
end  

Warming up --------------------------------------
            sort    88.338k i/100ms
           sort!   118.207k i/100ms
          to_set    19.339k i/100ms
           minus    67.971k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
            sort      1.062M (± 0.9%) i/s -      5.389M in   5.075109s
           sort!      1.542M (± 1.2%) i/s -      7.802M in   5.061364s
          to_set    200.302k (± 2.1%) i/s -      1.006M in   5.022793s
           minus    783.106k (± 1.5%) i/s -      3.942M in   5.035311s