How can I get the intersection, union, and subset of arrays in Ruby?

Question

I assume X and Y are arrays? If so, there's a very simple way to do this:

x = [1, 1, 2, 4]
y = [1, 2, 2, 2]

# intersection
x & y            # => [1, 2]

# union
x | y            # => [1, 2, 4]

# difference
x - y            # => [4]

Source

Utilizing the fact that you can do set operations on arrays by doing &(intersection), -(difference), and |(union).

Obviously I didn't implement the MultiSet to spec, but this should get you started:

class MultiSet
  attr_accessor :set
  def initialize(set)
    @set = set
  end
  # intersection
  def &(other)
    @set & other.set
  end
  # difference
  def -(other)
    @set - other.set
  end
  # union
  def |(other)
    @set | other.set
  end
end

x = MultiSet.new([1,1,2,2,3,4,5,6])
y = MultiSet.new([1,3,5,6])

p x - y # [2,2,4]
p x & y # [1,3,5,6]
p x | y # [1,2,3,4,5,6]

If Multiset extends from the Array class

x = [1, 1, 2, 4, 7]
y = [1, 2, 2, 2]
z = [1, 1, 3, 7]

UNION

x.union(y)           # => [1, 2, 4, 7]      (ONLY IN RUBY 2.6)
x.union(y, z)        # => [1, 2, 4, 7, 3]   (ONLY IN RUBY 2.6)
x | y                # => [1, 2, 4, 7]

DIFFERENCE

x.difference(y)      # => [4, 7] (ONLY IN RUBY 2.6)
x.difference(y, z)   # => [4] (ONLY IN RUBY 2.6)
x - y                # => [4, 7]

INTERSECTION

x.intersection(y)    # => [1, 2] (ONLY IN RUBY 2.7)
x & y                # => [1, 2]

For more info about the new methods in Ruby 2.6, you can check this blog post about its new features