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SQL: CONTAINS with an array (not List) right-hand side never matches #6995
Description
Summary
ContainsCondition.execute() only normalizes a plain array (String[], int[], ...) to a List when it appears on the left-hand side of CONTAINS (fixed in #6984 / PR #6993). When the array is on the right-hand side instead, it still falls through to the per-element equalsInContainsSpace(o, right) loop, which compares each left-hand element against the whole array object - so the condition is essentially always false.
Repro
SELECT ('a b c'.split(' ') CONTAINS 'x y'.split(' '))'x y'.split(' ') is a String[], so it never equals any of ['a','b','c']'s elements - the condition returns false even for overlapping content, and there's no working way to express "these two split() results share an element" without wrapping one side in a list-producing function.
Where
engine/src/main/java/com/arcadedb/query/sql/parser/ContainsCondition.java, execute(Object, Object) - the right instanceof Collection check (and the right instanceof Iterable fallback below it) both miss a plain array, same root cause as #6984 but on the other side of the operator.
Suggested fix
Normalize right the same way #6993 normalizes left: if right is an array, convert it to a List before the existing Collection/Iterable branches run.
Filed as a follow-up noted during review of PR #6993 (out of scope for #6984, which only reported the left-hand-side case).
Activity
doc(#6984): explain why the array left-hand-side normalization recurses
review(#6995): keep the byte[] carve-out on the right-hand side only
Merge pull request #7079 from ArcadeData/fix/6995-7056-7029-6998
lvca commentedon Sep 3, 2026
Fixed in #7079, shipping in 26.9.1.
CONTAINSnow treats an array on the right the same as the equivalent list, so'a b c'.split(' ') CONTAINS 'a'.split(' ')and a parameter bound to a Java array both work instead of never matching.Note the meaning of
CONTAINSwith a collection on the right is unchanged: a single-item collection is unwrapped and its item looked up, while a longer one is searched for as one element of the left-hand list (tags CONTAINS ['a','b']matches a row whosetagscontains the list['a','b']). To test membership of several values, use one condition per value.One deliberate exception: a
BINARYvalue on the right stays a single value, solist CONTAINS :binarystill searches for that binary rather than for its bytes.❤️ Thanks for helping make ArcadeDB better! ArcadeDB is free and open source, sustained by its community. If it's useful to you or your company, please consider becoming a sponsor to keep development going.
fix(ArcadeData#6995,ArcadeData#7056,ArcadeData#7029,ArcadeData#6998):…