Comparing string arrays

[melonyuan]

first off all, thanks to everyone in this forum who has taken the time to help out. it is extremely appreciated!

now, on to the question. i have two string arrays that i need to step through, checking to see if items in one also belong to the other.

$allShadingGroups[]
$shadingGroupsUsed[]

i'd like to step though the former, deleting each item that does not belong to the latter. i'm thinking a series of nested for loops, but am not sure of the proper way to set this up.

for ($node in $allShadingGroups){
for ($node2 in $shadingGroupsUsed){
//some comparison here
//delete item
}
}

i know this logic is wrong, but can't seem to grasp the proper way to set this up. or, is this even the best way to tackle this?

any and all help is appreciated!
thanks in advance.

[joojaa]

Maya comes with a bundled mel commad for this. I dont exactly remeber the anme but its somethingIntersect se the mel command reference.

dDont reinvent the wheel

[melonyuan]

thanks joojaa,

i missed that in the docs somehow. it is stringArrayIntersector for anyone who is interested and here is the usage:

string $myIntersector = eval("stringArrayIntersector");
stringArrayIntersector -edit -reset $myIntersector;

string $initialArray[] = {"A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H", "I"};
string $itemListArray[] = {"B", "E", "H", "I"};
string $commonItems[];

stringArrayIntersector -edit -intersect $initialArray $myIntersector;
stringArrayIntersector -edit -intersect $itemListArray $myIntersector;
$commonItems = stringArrayIntersector -query $myIntersector;
print "commonItems = "; print $commonItems;

// Result: commonItems = B E H I //

[failure]

Lookup the stringArray* series of mel commands in your reference manual

[milodc]

You don't need stringArrayIntersector. Just do this:

string $initialArray[] = {"A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H", "I"};
string $itemListArray[] = {"B", "E", "H", "I"};
string $commonItems[] = stringArrayRemove(stringArrayRemove($itemListArray, $initialArray), $initialArray);

[melonyuan]

Thanks Milo - even cleaner!