No one has mentioned the Cookbook yet, so i will.

If you need @file to contain at least all the elements of @report, then you need to find the simple difference of the two. The simple difference is the (paraphrasing from the Cookbook) "set of members of @report, but not of @file". If this set is empty, then @file contains at least all the elements of @report. So, working with Recipe 4.7:

use strict;

my @report = qw(sqltable mike_test sarak_mike);
my @file   = (@report, qw(plus a little more));

# off by 0
print '@file was off by ' 
   . simple_compare(\@report,\@file)
   . " elements\n";

# still 0, that elem wasn't in @report
pop @file;
print '@file was off by ' 
   . simple_compare(\@report,\@file)
   . " elements\n";

# off by 1, that one was
shift @file;
print '@file was off by ' 
   . simple_compare(\@report,\@file)
   . " elements\n";  

# returns number of elements in A that aren't in B
sub simple_compare {
   my ($A,$B) = @_;

   # build lookup table
   my %seen = map { $_ => 1 } @$B;
   
   # find those in A that aren't in B
   my @aonly;
   foreach my $item (@$A) {
      push @aonly,$item unless ($seen{$item});
   }
   
   return scalar @aonly;
}
[download]

(Array::Compare has a simple_compare() method, but it's definition of a simple compare is not the same as the Cookbook's.)

Also note that this could only a be partial solution. What if you needed to compare these two arrays:

my @report = qw(one one two);
my @file   = qw(one two two);
[download]

Now what? @file definitely contains at least one of each element from @report. But, @file doesn't contain 2 'one's like @report does. If you need something like this, but you don't care about order, then use rob_au's suggestion and sort the arrays first. If you do care about order, use that code verbatim. Hope this helps!

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)

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