Let's say you have a list of values that are ab cdeThe order on the list might be changed. a cdbeHow would you detect this change? We needed something like this when we were building a revision history page for our online form building tool. We found a quick and dirty solution but I am looking for a more elegant solution for this. Here is what the revision descriptions look like:Here is the tough part: Elements can be removed/added from/to anywhere on the list. So, the algorithm should be able to ignore those changes.  
Detect Order Changes in a List
algorithms