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

Ruby 2.6+

Ruby's introduced difference in 2.6.

This gives a very fast, very readable solution here, as follows:

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

a.difference(b).any?
# => false
a.difference(b.reverse).any?
# => false

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
b = [1, 2, 3]
a.difference(b).any?
# => true

Running the benchmarks:

a = Array.new(1000) { rand(100) }
b = Array.new(1000) { rand(100) }

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? }  
  x.report('difference') { a.difference(b).any? }
end

      sort     13.908k (± 2.6%) i/s -     69.513k in   5.001443s
     sort!     14.656k (± 3.0%) i/s -     73.736k in   5.035744s
    to_set     5.125k  (± 2.9%) i/s -     26.023k in   5.082083s
     minus     16.398k (± 2.2%) i/s -     83.181k in   5.074938s
difference     27.839k (± 5.2%) i/s -    141.048k in   5.080706s

Hope that helps someone!