Intersection and union of ArrayLists in Java

Here's a plain implementation without using any third-party library. Main advantage over retainAll, removeAll and addAll is that these methods don't modify the original lists input to the methods.

public class Test {

    public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {

        List<String> list1 = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("A", "B", "C"));
        List<String> list2 = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("B", "C", "D", "E", "F"));

        System.out.println(new Test().intersection(list1, list2));
        System.out.println(new Test().union(list1, list2));
    }

    public <T> List<T> union(List<T> list1, List<T> list2) {
        Set<T> set = new HashSet<T>();

        set.addAll(list1);
        set.addAll(list2);

        return new ArrayList<T>(set);
    }

    public <T> List<T> intersection(List<T> list1, List<T> list2) {
        List<T> list = new ArrayList<T>();

        for (T t : list1) {
            if(list2.contains(t)) {
                list.add(t);
            }
        }

        return list;
    }
}

Collection (so ArrayList also) have:

col.retainAll(otherCol) // for intersection
col.addAll(otherCol) // for union

Use a List implementation if you accept repetitions, a Set implementation if you don't:

Collection<String> col1 = new ArrayList<String>(); // {a, b, c}
// Collection<String> col1 = new TreeSet<String>();
col1.add("a");
col1.add("b");
col1.add("c");

Collection<String> col2 = new ArrayList<String>(); // {b, c, d, e}
// Collection<String> col2 = new TreeSet<String>();
col2.add("b");
col2.add("c");
col2.add("d");
col2.add("e");

col1.addAll(col2);
System.out.println(col1); 
//output for ArrayList: [a, b, c, b, c, d, e]
//output for TreeSet: [a, b, c, d, e]

This post is fairly old, but nevertheless it was the first one popping up on google when looking for that topic.

I want to give an update using Java 8 streams doing (basically) the same thing in a single line:

List<T> intersect = list1.stream()
    .filter(list2::contains)
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

List<T> union = Stream.concat(list1.stream(), list2.stream())
    .distinct()
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

If anyone has a better/faster solution let me know, but this solution is a nice one liner that can be easily included in a method without adding a unnecessary helper class/method and still keep the readability.