Finding if an array contains all elements in another array

Question

I am trying to loop through 2 arrays, the outer array is longer then the other. It will loop through the first and if the 2nd array does not contain that int it will return a false. But I cannot figure out how to go about this. This is what I have so far:

public boolean linearIn(int[] outer, int[] inner) {
  for (int i = 0; i < outer.length; i++) {
    if (!inner.contains(outer[i])) {
      return false;
    }
  }

  return true;
}

I am getting this error when run:

Cannot invoke contains(int) on the array type int[]

I am wondering if it can be done without using a nested loop (like above). I know I'm doing something wrong and if anyone could help on the matter it would be great. Also I wasn't sure what class to look for in the java doc for the int[].

Answer 1

You could check that the larger of the arrays outer contains every element in the smaller one, i.e. inner:

public static boolean linearIn(Integer[] outer, Integer[] inner) {

   return Arrays.asList(outer).containsAll(Arrays.asList(inner));
}

Note: Integer types are required for this approach to work. If primitives are used, then Arrays.asList will return a List containing a single element of type int[]. In that case, invoking containsAll will not check the actual content of the arrays but rather compare the primitive int array Object references.