How can I find matching values in two arrays? [duplicate]

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

You can use :

const intersection = array1.filter(element => array2.includes(element));

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

I found a slight alteration on what @jota3 suggested worked perfectly for me.

var intersections = array1.filter(e => array2.indexOf(e) !== -1);

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

This function runs in O(n log(n) + m log(m)) compared to O(n*m) (as seen in the other solutions with loops/indexOf) which can be useful if you are dealing with lots of values.

However, because neither "a" > 1 nor "a" < 1, this only works for elements of the same type.

function intersect_arrays(a, b) {
    var sorted_a = a.concat().sort();
    var sorted_b = b.concat().sort();
    var common = [];
    var a_i = 0;
    var b_i = 0;

    while (a_i < a.length
           && b_i < b.length)
    {
        if (sorted_a[a_i] === sorted_b[b_i]) {
            common.push(sorted_a[a_i]);
            a_i++;
            b_i++;
        }
        else if(sorted_a[a_i] < sorted_b[b_i]) {
            a_i++;
        }
        else {
            b_i++;
        }
    }
    return common;
}

Example:

var array1 = ["cat", "sum", "fun", "hut"], //modified for additional match
    array2 = ["bat", "cat", "dog", "sun", "hut", "gut"];
intersect_arrays(array1, array2);
>> ["cat", "hut"]

Answer 5

Loop through the second array each time you iterate over an element in the first array, then check for matches.

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

function getMatch(a, b) {
    var matches = [];

    for ( var i = 0; i < a.length; i++ ) {
        for ( var e = 0; e < b.length; e++ ) {
            if ( a[i] === b[e] ) matches.push( a[i] );
        }
    }
    return matches;
}

getMatch(array1, array2); // ["cat"]

Answer 6

var array1  = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6];
var array2 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9];
var array3 = array2.filter(function(obj) { 
    return array1.indexOf(obj) !== -1; 
});