There should be methods that compare two collections lexicographically, something like this on the Collections class:

public static <T> int compare(Collection<? extends T> c1,
                                  Collection<? extends T> c2,
                                  Comparator<? super T> cmp)

public static <T extends Comparable<? super T>>
    int compare(Collection<? extends T> c1, Collection<? extends T> c2)

Of course, the collections must have a well-defined iteration order, such as List, LinkedHashSet, or SortedSet.

Update 2023-10-23: the arguments could be SequencedCollection to ensure encounter order is well-defined.