Determine if one array contains all elements of another array

Question

I need to tell if an array contains all of the elements of another array with duplicates.

[1,2,3].contains_all? [1,2]   #=> true
[1,2,3].contains_all         


        

Answer 1

Here's a naive and straightforward implementation (not the most efficient one, likely). Just count the elements and compare both elements and their occurrence counts.

class Array
  def contains_all? ary
    # group the arrays, so that 
    #   [2, 1, 1, 3] becomes {1 => 2, 2 => 1, 3 => 1}
    my_groups = group_and_count self
    their_groups = group_and_count ary

    their_groups.each do |el, cnt|
      if !my_groups[el] || my_groups[el] < cnt
        return false
      end
    end

    true
  end

  private
  def group_and_count ary
    ary.reduce({}) do |memo, el|
      memo[el] ||= 0
      memo[el] += 1
      memo
    end
  end

end

[1, 2, 3].contains_all? [1, 2]   # => true
[1, 2, 3].contains_all? [1, 2, 2] # => false
[2, 1, 2, 3].contains_all? [1, 2, 2] # => true
[1, 2, 3].contains_all? [] # => true
[].contains_all? [1, 2] # => false

Answer 2

It seems you need a multiset. Check out this gem, I think it does what you need.

You can use is and do something like (if the intersection is equal to the second multiset then the first one includes all of its elements):

@ms1 & @ms2 == @ms2