Examining two string arrays for equivalence

Question

Is there a better way to examine whether two string arrays have the same contents than this?

string[] first = new string[]{\"cat\",\"and\",\"mouse\"};
string[] s         


        

Answer 1

Nothing wrong with the logic of the method, but the fact that you're testing Contains for each item in the first sequence means the algorithm runs in O(n^2) time in general. You can also make one or two other smaller optimisations and improvements

I would implement such a function as follows. Define an extension method as such (example in .NET 4.0).

public static bool SequenceEquals(this IEnumerable seq1, IEnumerable seq2)
{
    foreach (var pair in Enumerable.Zip(seq1, seq2)
    {
        if (!pair.Item1.Equals(pair.Item2))
            return;
    }
    return false;
}