Question

I have two Ruby arrays, and I need to see if they have any values in common. I could just loop through each of the values in one array and do include?() on the other, but I’m sure there’s a better way. What is it? (The arrays both hold strings.)

Thanks.

Answer 1

Set intersect them:

a1 & a2

Here’s an example:

> a1 = [ 'foo', 'bar' ]
> a2 = [ 'bar', 'baz' ]
> a1 & a2
=> ["bar"]
> !(a1 & a2).empty? # Returns true if there are any elements in common
=> true