CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
user3328513
user3328513

Reputation: 199

powershell compare 2 arrays output if match

I have two arrays that I want to compare the items of

I have array A [hi,no,lo,yes,because] and array B [mick,tickle,fickle,pickle,ni,hi,no,lo,yes,because]

so I want to search every item in A and compare to every item in B and if there is a match return "there is a match"

Upvotes: 5

Views: 33527

Answers (1)

Alexander Obersht
Alexander Obersht

Reputation: 3275

One-liner: 

foreach ($elem in $A) { if ($B -contains $elem) { "there is a match" } }

But it may be more convenient to count matches:

$c = 0; foreach ($elem in $A) { if ($B -contains $elem) { $c++ } }
"{0} matches found" -f $c

Or if you want to check if arrays intersect at all:

foreach ($elem in $A) { if ($B -contains $elem) { "there is a match"; break } }

Or if you want to check if $A is a subset of $B:

$c = 0; foreach ($elem in $A) { if ($B -contains $elem) { $c++ } }
if ($c -eq $A.Count) { '$A is a subset of $B' }

Finally there's Compare-Object cmdlet which is actually better than all of the above. Example (outputs only elements that are present in both arrays):

Compare-Object -IncludeEqual -ExcludeDifferent $A $B

Upvotes: 11

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