I'm comparing two lists in Dart like this:
main() {
if ([1,2,3] == [1,2,3]) {
print("Equal");
} else {
print("Not equal");
}
}
But they are never equal. There doesn't seem to be an equal()
method in the Dart API to compare Lists or Collections. Is there a proper way to do this?
To complete Gunter's answer: the recommended way to compare lists for equality (rather than identity) is by using the Equality classes from the following package
import 'package:collection/collection.dart';
Edit: prior to 1.13, it was import 'package:collection/equality.dart';
E.g.:
Function eq = const ListEquality().equals;
print(eq([1,'two',3], [1,'two',3])); // => true
The above prints true
because the corresponding list elements are identical()
. If you want to (deeply) compare lists that might contain other collections then instead use:
Function deepEq = const DeepCollectionEquality().equals;
List list1 = [1, ['a',[]], 3];
List list2 = [1, ['a',[]], 3];
print( eq(list1, list2)); // => false
print(deepEq(list1, list2)); // => true
There are other Equality classes that can be combined in many ways, including equality for Map
s. You can even perform an unordered (deep) comparison of collections:
Function unOrdDeepEq = const DeepCollectionEquality.unordered().equals;
List list3 = [3, [[],'a'], 1];
print(unOrdDeepEq(list2, list3)); // => true
For details see the package API documentation. As usual, to use such a package you must list it in your pubspec.yaml
:
dependencies:
collection: any