Taking cue from Array#union and Array#difference methods added to Ruby 2.6, Ruby has now added Array#intersection method which is an alias for Array#&.
The purpose behind these additions is to make the methods more clean and readable than their operator counterparts.
Lets take a look at what each method does,
Array#intersection
The Array#intersection method returns a new array containing elements common to both arrays. The order is preserved from original array.
Since its a set operation, the resultant array has unique elements.
[ 1, 1, 3, 5 ].intersection([ 3, 2, 1 ]) #=> [ 1, 3 ]
[ "a" ].intersection #=> [ "a" ]You can also pass multiple arrays as arguments to the method,
[ "a", "b", "z" ].intersection([ "a", "b", "c" ], [ "b" ]) # => [ "b" ]Array#union
Another set operation, Array#union returns a new array by joining other arrays with itself, excluding any duplicates. The order is preserved from given arrays.
[ "a", "b", "c" ].union( [ "c", "d", "a" ] ) #=> [ "a", "b", "c", "d" ]
[ "a" ].union #=> [ "a" ]Like Array#intersection, you can pass multiple arrays as arguments to the method,
[ 1, 2, "a" ].union([ 1, 27, "a" ], [ 2, "I" ]) #=> [ 1, 2, "a", 27, "I" ]Array#difference
As its name suggests, Array#difference returns a new array with items from receiver after removing items that appear in both receiver and array given as arguments. The order is preserved from original array.
[ 1, 4, 7, 8, "a", :t ].difference([ 4, :t ]) #=> [ 1, 7, 8, "a" ]Again, multiple arrays as arguments can be passed to the method,
[ 1, 4, 7, 8, "a", :t ].difference([ 4, :t ], [ "a" ]) #=> [ 1, 7, 8 ]Note that all above mentioned methods compare elements using their hash and eql? methods for efficiency.
