You'd get true as every character in string2 is in string1. If the two strings were:
A:
Finally, I told him the best method would simply be O(n+m). That is, iterate through the first string and put each character in a
hashtable (cost of O(n) or 16). Then iterate the 2nd string and query the hashtable for each character you find. If its not found, you don't have a match. That would cost 8 operations - so both operations together is a total of 24 operations. Not bad and way better than the other solutions.
He stepped up to the whiteboard, "What if - given that we have a limited range of possible characters - I assigned each character of the alphabet to a prime number starting with 2 and going up from there. So A would be 2, and B would be 3, and C would be 5, etc. And then I went through the first string and 'multiplied' each character's prime number together. You'd end up with some big number right? And then - what if I iterated through the 2nd string and 'divided' by every character in there. If any division gave a remainder - you knew you didn't have a match. If there was no remainders through the whole process, you knew you had a subset. Would that work?"
Every once in awhile - someone thinks so fantastically far out of your box you really need a minute to catch up. And now that he was standing, his leather pants weren't helping with this.
Now mind you - Guy's solution (and of course, needless to say I doubt Guy was the first to ever think of this) was algorithmically speaking no better than mine. Even practically, you'd still probably use mine as it was more general and didn't make you deal with messy big integers. But on the "clever scale", Guy's was way, way, (way) more fun.
you'd get false as Z isn't in the first string.