[mostyfriedman]

so basically you are trying to find if elements of array b exist in array a. a simple nested loop will do this

[bcranger]

nub, on 13 August 2010 - 02:38 PM, said:

I am trying to check if an array's elements contain another array.
For example array a contains array b. This would return true:

Pardon me, you misworded your desire in relation to your example. Not contains an array, you meant contains the elements in the array...huge difference.

As for not using loops to accomplish your task, it would be hard, if at all possible. I personally can't think of a way to do that without using loops. You can either loop through the 2nd array and check to see if the 1st array contains it by looping through. Or you could use the better method in the Arrays class, binarySearch.

Arrays.sort(your1stArray);
for(int i : your2ndArray)
{ 
  if(Arrays.binarySearch(your1stArray,i) < 0)
  {
    return false;
  }
}
return true;

Edit: Mosty keeps me on my toes Must sort the 1st array.

This post has been edited by bcranger: 13 August 2010 - 03:57 PM

[mostyfriedman]

@bcranger you need to sort the array first, if you're using binary search

[bcranger]

Yea, you are right mostyfriend , my bad missed that point

[mostyfriedman]

lol, it happens to the best of us.

[pbl]

nub, on 13 August 2010 - 04:38 PM, said:

preferably, I would like to do this without a loop since my arrays are very large and it takes too long.

What ??? If you arrays are large you want to use a loop

[bcranger]

OP: I already showed you how to do it, although I think it seems very inefficient

[macosxnerd101]

You are taking the wrong approach. Take the smaller array and iterate through the bigger array. If you reach an index where the smallerArray.length exceeds the number of remaining elems in the larger array, return false. Otherwise, iterate linearly through the bigger array, comparing the corresponding element in the smaller array. If you find elems that don't match, reset the smallerArray counter to 0 (or start over with the smaller array).

Edit: @bcranger: If the OP is concerned about the ordering of the elements, sorting is a moot point.

[bcranger]

macosxnerd101, on 14 August 2010 - 08:03 AM, said:

You are taking the wrong approach. Take the smaller array and iterate through the bigger array. If you reach an index where the smallerArray.length exceeds the number of remaining elems in the larger array, return false. Otherwise, iterate linearly through the bigger array, comparing the corresponding element in the smaller array. If you find elems that don't match, reset the smallerArray counter to 0 (or start over with the smaller array).

Edit: @bcranger: If the OP is concerned about the ordering of the elements, sorting is a moot point.

Have to sort to use the binary search method or result will be messed up. Mostyfriendman kindly pointed that out

[bcranger]

Should be false. The blue color looks different in the two pictures. You wanted the method to return true if ALL the array values were contained, right?