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

combining & and size may be fast too.

require 'benchmark/ips'
require 'set'

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('&.size') { a.size == b.size && (a & b).size == a.size }  
end  

Calculating -------------------------------------
                sort    896.094k (±11.4%) i/s -      4.458M in   5.056163s
               sort!      1.237M (± 4.5%) i/s -      6.261M in   5.071796s
              to_set    224.564k (± 6.3%) i/s -      1.132M in   5.064753s
               minus      2.230M (± 7.0%) i/s -     11.171M in   5.038655s
              &.size      2.829M (± 5.4%) i/s -     14.125M in   5.010414s