I agree with Nicolas, but I think that it's really important that we have this discussion, reach a consensus, and them implement it!

That's why I posted the message here rather than just posting a bug report.

There used to be a method called hasSameElementsAs: (now called, inexplicably, sameElements:) that could be pressed into service so that two intervals, or an array and and interval, can have the same elements but still be unequal.  But the role of species was to define when things could be equal...

Maybe we need a method "hasSameSequenceOfElementsAs:" which would be applicable to any pair of  sequenceable collections, as well as being faster to implement, than sameElements: (which is currently quadratic).

I assume that by quadratic you mean a quadratic number of compares. If you implement hasSameElementsAs: by putting the elements of at least one of your collections into a set and assume the include: operation for sets is O(1) compares then the cost of hasSameElementsAs: is linear compares. If you want to count duplicates then you need to use bags instead of sets. Perhaps you already knew this. Ralph Boland