I have two arrays and I want to check if every element in arr2 is in arr1. If the value of an element is repeated in arr2, it needs to be in arr1 an equal number of times. What's the best way of doing this?

arr1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
arr2 = [1, 2]

checkSuperbag(arr1, arr2)
> true //both 1 and 2 are in arr1

arr1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
arr2 = [1, 2, 5]

checkSuperbag(arr1, arr2)
> false //5 is not in arr1

arr1 = [1, 2, 3]
arr2 = [1, 2, 3, 3]

checkSuperbag(arr1, arr2)
> false //3 is not in arr1 twice

One option is to sort the two arrays, then traverse both, comparing elements. If an element in the sub-bag candidate is not found in the super-bag, the former is not a sub-bag. Sorting is generally O(n*log(n)) and the comparison is O(max(s,t)), where s and t are the array sizes, for a total time complexity of O(m*log(m)), where m=max(s,t).

function superbag(sup, sub) {
    sup.sort();
    sub.sort();
    var i, j;
    for (i=0,j=0; i

If the elements in the actual code are integers, you can use a special-purpose integer sorting algorithm (such as radix sort) for an overall O(max(s,t)) time complexity, though if the bags are small, the built-in Array.sort will likely run faster than a custom integer sort.

A solution with potentially lesser time-complexity is to create a bag type. Integer bags are particularly easy. Flip the existing arrays for the bags: create an object or an array with the integers as keys and a repeat count for values. Using an array won't waste space by creating as arrays are sparse in Javascript. You can use bag operations for sub-bag or super-bag checks. For example, subtract the super from the sub candidate and test if the result non-empty. Alternatively, the contains operation should be O(1) (or possibly O(log(n))), so looping over the sub-bag candidate and testing if the super-bag containment exceeds the sub-bag's containment for each sub-bag element should be O(n) or O(n*log(n)).

The following is untested. Implementation of isInt left as an exercise.

function IntBag(from) {
    if (from instanceof IntBag) {
        return from.clone();
    } else if (from instanceof Array) {
        for (var i=0; i  0) {
        // element is still in bag
        this.size -= count;
    } else {
        // remove element entirely
        this.size -= count + this[i];
        delete this[i];
    }
};
IntBag.prototype.each = function(f) {
    var i;
    foreach (i in this) {
        f(i, this[i]);
    }
};
IntBag.prototype.find = function(p) {
    var result = [];
    var i;
    foreach (i in this.elements) {
        if (p(i, this[i])) {
            return i;
        }
    }
    return null;
};
IntBag.prototype.sub = function(other) {
    other.each(function(i, count) {
        this.remove(i, count);
    });
    return this;
};
IntBag.prototype.union = function(other) {
    var union = this.clone();
    other.each(function(i, count) {
        if (union.contains(i) 

See also "comparing javascript arrays" for an example implementation of a set of objects, should you ever wish to disallow repetition of elements.