Question

I have two arrays, and I want to be able to compare the two and only return the values that match. For example both arrays have the value cat so that is what will be returned. I haven’t found anything like this. What would be the best way to return similarities?

var array1 = ["cat", "sum","fun", "run"];
var array2 = ["bat", "cat","dog","sun", "hut", "gut"];

//if value in array1 is equal to value in array2 then return match: cat

Answer 1

Naturally, my approach was to loop through the first array once and check the index of each value in the second array. If the index is > -1, then push it onto the returned array.

​Array.prototype.diff = function(arr2) {
    var ret = [];
    for(var i in this) {   
        if(arr2.indexOf(this[i]) > -1){
            ret.push(this[i]);
        }
    }
    return ret;
};

​
My solution doesn’t use two loops like others do so it may run a bit faster. If you want to avoid using for..in, you can sort both arrays first to reindex all their values:

Array.prototype.diff = function(arr2) {
    var ret = [];
    this.sort();
    arr2.sort();
    for(var i = 0; i < this.length; i += 1) {
        if(arr2.indexOf(this[i]) > -1){
            ret.push(this[i]);
        }
    }
    return ret;
};

Usage would look like:

var array1 = ["cat", "sum","fun", "run", "hut"];
var array2 = ["bat", "cat","dog","sun", "hut", "gut"];

console.log(array1.diff(array2));

If you have an issue/problem with extending the Array prototype, you could easily change this to a function.

var diff = function(arr, arr2) {

And you’d change anywhere where the func originally said this to arr2.