LINQ Lambda – Find all ID’s in one list that don’t exist in another list

lambdalinq

I have two collections of objects (List list1 and List list2). There is a property on each called "ID". I know that list2 will always have more items than list1, I just need an easy way to get a collection of all the items that exist in list2 but not list1 using LINQ lambda expressions.

Best Answer

If you only need the IDs of the items then Mark's answer will do the trick nicely. If you need to return the items themselves (and they don't already have a suitable Equals implementation) then you could try something like this:

// assumes that the ID property is an int - change the generic type if it's not
var ids = new HashSet<int>(list1.Select(x => x.ID));
var results = list2.Where(x => !ids.Contains(x.ID));

Related Solutions

C# – How would you do a “not in” query with LINQ

You want the Except operator.

var answer = list1.Except(list2);

Better explanation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/charlie/linq-farm-more-on-set-operators

NOTE: This technique works best for primitive types only, since you have to implement an IEqualityComparer to use the Except method with complex types.

.net – Which method performs better: .Any() vs .Count() > 0

If you are starting with something that has a .Length or .Count (such as ICollection<T>, IList<T>, List<T>, etc) - then this will be the fastest option, since it doesn't need to go through the GetEnumerator()/MoveNext()/Dispose() sequence required by Any() to check for a non-empty IEnumerable<T> sequence.

For just IEnumerable<T>, then Any() will generally be quicker, as it only has to look at one iteration. However, note that the LINQ-to-Objects implementation of Count() does check for ICollection<T> (using .Count as an optimisation) - so if your underlying data-source is directly a list/collection, there won't be a huge difference. Don't ask me why it doesn't use the non-generic ICollection...

Of course, if you have used LINQ to filter it etc (Where etc), you will have an iterator-block based sequence, and so this ICollection<T> optimisation is useless.

In general with IEnumerable<T> : stick with Any() ;-p

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How would you do a “not in” query with LINQ

.net – Which method performs better: .Any() vs .Count() > 0

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