Check if one IEnumerable contains all elements of another IEnumerable

Brandon Zacharie picture Brandon Zacharie · Jul 18, 2010 · Viewed 63.6k times · Source

What is the fastest way to determine if one IEnumerable contains all the elements of another IEnumerable when comparing a field/property of each element in both collections?


public class Item
{
    public string Value;

    public Item(string value)
    {
        Value = value;
    }
}

//example usage

Item[] List1 = {new Item("1"),new Item("a")};
Item[] List2 = {new Item("a"),new Item("b"),new Item("c"),new Item("1")};

bool Contains(IEnumerable<Item> list1, IEnumerable<Item>, list2)
{
    var list1Values = list1.Select(item => item.Value);
    var list2Values = list2.Select(item => item.Value);

    return //are ALL of list1Values in list2Values?
}

Contains(List1,List2) // should return true
Contains(List2,List1) // should return false

Answer

Kent Boogaart picture Kent Boogaart · Jul 18, 2010

There is no "fast way" to do this unless you track and maintain some state that determines whether all values in one collection are contained in another. If you only have IEnumerable<T> to work against, I would use Intersect.

var allOfList1IsInList2 = list1.Intersect(list2).Count() == list1.Count();

The performance of this should be very reasonable, since Intersect() will enumerate over each list just once. Also, the second call to Count() will be optimal if the underlying type is an ICollection<T> rather than just an IEnumerable<T>.