How to check if two arrays are equal with JavaScript? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Based on Tim James answer and Fox32's comment, the following should check for nulls, with the assumption that two nulls are not equal.

function arrays_equal(a,b) { return !!a && !!b && !(a<b || b<a); }

> arrays_equal([1,2,3], [1,3,4])
false
> arrays_equal([1,2,3], [1,2,3])
true
> arrays_equal([1,3,4], [1,2,3])
false
> arrays_equal(null, [1,2,3])
false
> arrays_equal(null, null)
false

Answer 2

jQuery does not have a method for comparing arrays. However the Underscore library (or the comparable Lodash library) does have such a method: isEqual, and it can handle a variety of other cases (like object literals) as well. To stick to the provided example:

var a=[1,2,3];
var b=[3,2,1];
var c=new Array(1,2,3);

alert(_.isEqual(a, b) + "|" + _.isEqual(b, c));

By the way: Underscore has lots of other methods that jQuery is missing as well, so it's a great complement to jQuery.

EDIT: As has been pointed out in the comments, the above now only works if both arrays have their elements in the same order, ie.:

_.isEqual([1,2,3], [1,2,3]); // true
_.isEqual([1,2,3], [3,2,1]); // false

Fortunately Javascript has a built in method for for solving this exact problem, sort:

_.isEqual([1,2,3].sort(), [3,2,1].sort()); // true

Answer 3

Using map() and reduce():

function arraysEqual (a1, a2) {
    return a1 === a2 || (
        a1 !== null && a2 !== null &&
        a1.length === a2.length &&
        a1
            .map(function (val, idx) { return val === a2[idx]; })
            .reduce(function (prev, cur) { return prev && cur; }, true)
    );
}

Answer 4

For primitive values like numbers and strings this is an easy solution:

a = [1,2,3]

b = [3,2,1]

a.sort().toString() == b.sort().toString() 

The call to sort() will ensure that the order of the elements does not matter. The toString() call will create a string with the values comma separated so both strings can be tested for equality.