Test if all values in a list are unique

I have a small list of bytes and I want to test that they're all different values. For instance, I have this:

List<byte> theList = new List<byte> { 1,4,3,6,1 };

What's the best way to check if all values are distinct or not?

bool isUnique = theList.Distinct().Count() == theList.Count();

Here's another approach which is more efficient than Enumerable.Distinct + Enumerable.Count (all the more if the sequence is not a collection type). It uses a HashSet<T> which eliminates duplicates, is very efficient in lookups and has a count-property:

var distinctBytes = new HashSet<byte>(theList);
bool allDifferent = distinctBytes.Count == theList.Count;

or another - more subtle and efficient - approach:

var diffChecker = new HashSet<byte>();
bool allDifferent = theList.All(diffChecker.Add);

HashSet<T>.Add returns false if the element could not be added since it was already in the HashSet. Enumerable.All stops on the first "false".

Okay, here is the most efficient method I can think of using standard .Net

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public static class Extension
{
    public static bool HasDuplicate<T>(
        this IEnumerable<T> source,
        out T firstDuplicate)
    {
        if (source == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(source));
        }

        var checkBuffer = new HashSet<T>();
        foreach (var t in source)
        {
            if (checkBuffer.Add(t))
            {
                continue;
            }

            firstDuplicate = t;
            return true;
        }

        firstDuplicate = default(T);
        return false;
    }
}

essentially, what is the point of enumerating the whole sequence twice if all you want to do is find the first duplicate.

I could optimise this more by special casing an empty and single element sequences but that would depreciate from readability/maintainability with minimal gain.

The similar logic to Distinct using GroupBy:

var isUnique = theList.GroupBy(i => i).Count() == theList.Count;

Test if all values in a list are unique

Related

Recent Posts