Java Compare Two Lists

Question

I have two lists ( not java lists, you can say two columns)

For example

**List 1**            **Lists 2**
  milan                 hafil
  dingo               


        

Answer 1

Are these really lists (ordered, with duplicates), or are they sets (unordered, no duplicates)?

Because if it's the latter, then you can use, say, a java.util.HashSet<E> and do this in expected linear time using the convenient retainAll.

    List<String> list1 = Arrays.asList(
        "milan", "milan", "iga", "dingo", "milan"
    );
    List<String> list2 = Arrays.asList(
        "hafil", "milan", "dingo", "meat"
    );

    // intersection as set
    Set<String> intersect = new HashSet<String>(list1);
    intersect.retainAll(list2);
    System.out.println(intersect.size()); // prints "2"
    System.out.println(intersect); // prints "[milan, dingo]"

    // intersection/union as list
    List<String> intersectList = new ArrayList<String>();
    intersectList.addAll(list1);
    intersectList.addAll(list2);
    intersectList.retainAll(intersect);
    System.out.println(intersectList);
    // prints "[milan, milan, dingo, milan, milan, dingo]"

    // original lists are structurally unmodified
    System.out.println(list1); // prints "[milan, milan, iga, dingo, milan]"
    System.out.println(list2); // prints "[hafil, milan, dingo, meat]"

Answer 2

You can try intersection() and subtract() methods from CollectionUtils.

intersection() method gives you a collection containing common elements and the subtract() method gives you all the uncommon ones.

They should also take care of similar elements

Answer 3

Simple solution :-

    List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("a", "b", "d", "c"));
    List<String> list2 = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("b", "f", "c"));

    list.retainAll(list2);
    list2.removeAll(list);
    System.out.println("similiar " + list);
    System.out.println("different " + list2);

Output :-

similiar [b, c]
different [f]

Answer 4

If you are looking for a handy way to test the equality of two collections, you can use org.apache.commons.collections.CollectionUtils.isEqualCollection, which compares two collections regardless of the ordering.

Answer 5

Using java 8 removeIf

public int getSimilarItems(){
    List<String> one = Arrays.asList("milan", "dingo", "elpha", "hafil", "meat", "iga", "neeta.peeta");
    List<String> two = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList("hafil", "iga", "binga", "mike", "dingo")); //Cannot remove directly from array backed collection
    int initial = two.size();

    two.removeIf(one::contains);
    return initial - two.size();
}

Answer 6

Of all the approaches, I find using org.apache.commons.collections.CollectionUtils#isEqualCollection is the best approach. Here are the reasons -

• I don't have to declare any additional list/set myself
• I am not mutating the input lists
• It's very efficient. It checks the equality in O(N) complexity.

If it's not possible to have apache.commons.collections as a dependency, I would recommend to implement the algorithm it follows to check equality of the list because of it's efficiency.