Is there an AddUnique method similar to Addrange() for alist in C#

Question

I have a list in C#:

       var list = new List();
       list.AddRange(GetGreenCars());
       list.AddRange(GetBigCars());
       list.AddRange(         


        

Answer 1

Linq-less option! A different option in case the programmer cannot, or don't wanna use Linq.

var list = new List<Car>();
list.AddRange(GetGreenCars().FindAll((x) => !list.Contains(x)));
list.AddRange(GetBigCars().FindAll((x) => !list.Contains(x)));
list.AddRange(GetSmallCars().FindAll((x) => !list.Contains(x)));

If the initial list is empty as in the example above, you can actually avoid using FindAll(...) on the first AddRange().

Answer 2

and if you want to compare one property (id in this case), this should work

var list = new List<string>();
list.AddRange(GetGreenCars().Where(greencar => !list.Contains(greencar, car => car.id == greencar.id)));
list.AddRange(GetBigCars().Where(bigcar => !list.Contains(bigcar, car => car.id == bigcar.id)));
list.AddRange(GetSmallCars().Where(smallcar => !list.Contains(smallcar, car => car.id == smallcar.id)));

Answer 3

Yet another option using Linq:

public static void AddUnique<T>(this IList<T> self, IEnumerable<T> items)
{
  self.AddRange(
    items.Where(x => self.FirstOrDefault(y => y.Name == x.Name) ==
    null).ToList());
}

var list = new List<Car>();
list.AddUnique(GetGreenCars());
list.AddUnique(GetBigCars());
list.AddUnique(GetSmallCars());

Answer 4

I created an extension method that adds only unique values to anything implementing ICollection<T> (including a List<T>) from an IEnumerable<T>. Unlike implementations that use List<T>.Contains(), this method allows you to specify a lambda expression that determines if two items are the same.

/// <summary>
/// Adds only items that do not exist in source.  May be very slow for large collections and some types of source.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">Type in the collection.</typeparam>
/// <param name="source">Source collection</param>
/// <param name="predicate">Predicate to determine whether a new item is already in source.</param>
/// <param name="items">New items.</param>
public static void AddUniqueBy<T>(this ICollection<T> source, Func<T, T, bool> predicate, IEnumerable<T> items)
{
    foreach (T item in items)
    {
        bool existsInSource = source.Where(s => predicate(s, item)).Any();
        if (!existsInSource) source.Add(item);
    }
}

Usage:

source.AddUniqueBy<Foo>((s, i) => s.Id == i.Id, items);

Answer 5

Another option is to do something like:

public static void AddUnique<T>( this IList<T> self, IEnumerable<T> items )
{
    foreach(var item in items)
        if(!self.Contains(item))
            self.Add(item);
}


var list = new List<Car>();
list.AddUnique(GetGreenCars());
list.AddUnique(GetBigCars());
list.AddUnique(GetSmallCars());

Answer 6

One choice is to add them and remove the repeated ones:

var list = new List<Car>();
list.AddRange(GetGreenCars());
list.AddRange(GetBigCars());
list.AddRange(GetSmallCars());
list = list.Distinct().ToList();