Common elements in two lists

Question

Use Collection#retainAll().

listA.retainAll(listB);
// listA now contains only the elements which are also contained in listB.

If you want to avoid that changes are being affected in listA, then you need to create a new one.

List<Integer> common = new ArrayList<Integer>(listA);
common.retainAll(listB);
// common now contains only the elements which are contained in listA and listB.

You can use set intersection operations with your ArrayList objects.

Something like this:

List<Integer> l1 = new ArrayList<Integer>();

l1.add(1);
l1.add(2);
l1.add(3);

List<Integer> l2= new ArrayList<Integer>();
l2.add(4);
l2.add(2);
l2.add(3);

System.out.println("l1 == "+l1);
System.out.println("l2 == "+l2);

List<Integer> l3 = new ArrayList<Integer>(l2);
l3.retainAll(l1);

    System.out.println("l3 == "+l3);

Now, l3 should have only common elements between l1 and l2.

CONSOLE OUTPUT
l1 == [1, 2, 3]
l2 == [4, 2, 3]
l3 == [2, 3]

Why reinvent the wheel? Use Commons Collections:

CollectionUtils.intersection(java.util.Collection a, java.util.Collection b)

Using Java 8's Stream.filter() method in combination with List.contains():

import static java.util.Arrays.asList;
import static java.util.stream.Collectors.toList;

/* ... */

List<Integer> list1 = asList(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
List<Integer> list2 = asList(1, 3, 5, 7, 9);
    
List<Integer> common = list1.stream().filter(list2::contains).collect(toList());

consider two list L1 ans L2

Using Java8 we can easily find it out

L1.stream().filter(L2::contains).collect(Collectors.toList())

List<String> lista =new ArrayList<String>();
List<String> listb =new ArrayList<String>();

lista.add("Isabella");
lista.add("Angelina");
lista.add("Pille");
lista.add("Hazem");

listb.add("Isabella");
listb.add("Angelina");
listb.add("Bianca");

// Create an aplusb list which will contain both list (list1 and list2) in which common element will occur twice 
List<String> listapluslistb =new ArrayList<String>(lista);    
listapluslistb.addAll(listb);
                
// Create an aunionb set which will contain both list (list1 and list2) in which common element will occur once
Set<String> listaunionlistb =new HashSet<String>(lista);
listaunionlistb.addAll(listb);
                
for(String s:listaunionlistb)
{
    listapluslistb.remove(s);
}
System.out.println(listapluslistb);

You can get the common elements between two lists using the method "retainAll". This method will remove all unmatched elements from the list to which it applies.

Ex.: list.retainAll(list1);

In this case from the list, all the elements which are not in list1 will be removed and only those will be remaining which are common between list and list1.

List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<>();
list.add(10);
list.add(13);
list.add(12);
list.add(11);

List<Integer> list1 = new ArrayList<>();
list1.add(10);
list1.add(113);
list1.add(112);
list1.add(111);
//before retainAll
System.out.println(list);
System.out.println(list1);
//applying retainAll on list
list.retainAll(list1);
//After retainAll
System.out.println("list::"+list);
System.out.println("list1::"+list1);

Output:

[10, 13, 12, 11]
[10, 113, 112, 111]
list::[10]
list1::[10, 113, 112, 111]

NOTE: After retainAll applied on the list, the list contains common element between list and list1.