Cleanly merge two arrays in ActionScript (3.0)?

Question

What's a nice way to merge two sorted arrays in ActionScript (specifically ActionScript 3.0)? The resulting array should be sorted and without duplicates.

Answer 1

Please follow the below step to get your answer:

1. Concat two array using "Concat" Methos.
2. New Array (concated) sort using "Sort" method which provided as API in Array Class
3. Make user defined function to remove duplicates (see below functions)
4. > function removeDuplicates(p_arr:Array):Array {

    var ansArr:Array = new Array();
    var len:uint = p_arr.length;
    var i:uint = 0;
    var j:uint = 0;
    ansArr[j] = p_arr[i];
    i++;
    j++;
    while(i<len)
    {
       if(ansArr[j] != p_arr[i])
       { 
         ansArr[j] = p_arr[i];
         j++;
       }
       i++;
    }
    return ansArr;
   

   }

Returned "ansArr" will be sorted and without duplicate merged array of two array.

Answer 2

function remDuplicates(_array:Array):void{
    for (var i:int = 0; i < _array.length;++i) {
        var index:int = _array.indexOf(_array[i]);
        if (index != -1 && index != i) {
            _array.splice(i--, 1);
        }
    }
}

Then for the "merge" use concat. exemple :

var testArray:Array = [1, 1, 1, 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 7, 2, 3, 3, 6, 5, 8, 5, 4, 2, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 65, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 4, 7];
var testArray2:Array = [1, 1, 1, 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 7, 2, 3, 3, 6, 5, 8, 5, 4, 2, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 65, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 4, 7];

testArray.concat(testArray2);
trace(testArray);
remDuplicates(testArray);
trace(testArray);

Answer 3

To merge (concatenate) arrays, use .concat().

Below are two examples of how you can concatenate arrays and remove duplicates at the same time.

More convenient way: (you can use ArrayUtil.createUniqueCopy() from as3corelib)

// from as3corelib:
import com.adobe.utils.ArrayUtil;

var a1:Array = ["a", "b", "c"];
var a2:Array = ["c", "b", "x", "y"];

var c:Array = ArrayUtil.createUniqueCopy(a1.concat(a2)); // result: ["a", "b", "c", "x", "y"]

Slightly faster way: (you can loop through the arrays yourself and use Array.indexOf() to check for duplicates)

var a1:Array = ["a", "b", "c"];
var a2:Array = ["c", "b", "x", "y"];
var a3:Array = ["a", "x", "x", "y", "z"];

var c:Array = arrConcatUnique(a1, a2, a3); // result: ["a", "b", "c", "x", "y", "z"]

private function arrConcatUnique(...args):Array
{
    var retArr:Array = new Array();
    for each (var arg:* in args)
    {
        if (arg is Array)
        {
            for each (var value:* in arg)
            {
                if (retArr.indexOf(value) == -1)
                    retArr.push(value);
            }
        }
    }
    return retArr;
}

Answer 4

Using Array.indexOf to detect duplicates is going to be painfully slow if you have a List containing a large number of elements; a far quicker way of removing duplciates would be to throw the contents of the Array into a Set after concatenating them.

// Combine the two Arrays.
const combined : Array = a.concat(b);

// Convert them to a Set; this will knock out all duplicates.
const set : Object = {};  // use a Dictionary if combined contains complex types.

const len : uint = combined.length;
for (var i : uint = 0; i < len; i++) {
    set[combined[i]] = true;
}

// Extract all values from the Set to produce the final result.
const result : Array = [];
for (var prop : * in set) {
    result.push[prop];
}

If your program makes heavy use of Collections then if may be prudent to make use of one of the many AS3 Collections frameworks out there which provide a simple interface for manipulating data and will always take the optimal approach when it comes to the implementation.

• AS3Commons Collections
• Polygonal DS

Answer 5

This is kind of an simple algorithm to write. I would be surprised if there were a more direct way to do this in Actionscript.

function merge(a1:Array, a2:Array):Array {
    var result:Array = [];
    var i1:int = 0, i2:int = 0;

    while (i1 < a1.length && i2 < a2.length) {
        if (a1[i1] < a2[i2]) {
            result.push(a1[i1]);
            i1++;
        } else if (a2[i2] < a1[i1]) {
            result.push(a2[i2]);
            i2++;
        } else {
            result.push(a1[i1]);
            i1++;
            i2++;
        }
    }

    while (i1 < a1.length) result.push(a1[i1++]);
    while (i2 < a2.length) result.push(a2[i2++]);

    return result;
}