My goal is to compare two AoAs for equality, where the order of the elements of the main array and sub arrays is unimportant. Sort of an equivalence class over permutations. For example, these AoAs are equal: 
$ha = [[1,2],
       [5,5,5],
       [1,2],
       [3,4]];

$hb = [[4,3],
       [1,2],
       [2,1],
       [5,5,5]];

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Order is unimportant, so the data are set-like, but because there are repeated elements, we need a hierarchical multiset/bag comparison.

Pulling out Set::Bag, I create 

use Set::Bag;
my $bag_a = Set::Bag->new();
my $bag_b = Set::Bag->new();

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and then get stuck, because elements must be strings, not anon arrays. So I create a hack: sort and serialize the arrays at each level: 
my @ser_a;
for my $aref (@$ha) {
    push @ser_a, join ',', sort {$a <=> $b} @$aref;
}
my @ser_b;
for my $bref (@$hb) {
    push @ser_b, join ',', sort {$a <=> $b} @$bref;
}
print "They are ";
unless (  (join ',', sort @ser_a) eq (join ',', sort @ser_b)) {
   print "not ";
}
print "equal\n";

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This works, but costs sorts, stringifications, and joins. It is slow. Is there a faster and/or more elegant way to do this?

-Mark

In reply to Comparing unordered hierarchical arrays by kvale

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