LINQ Select Distinct with Anonymous Types

So I have a collection of objects. The exact type isn't important. From it I want to extract all the unique pairs of a pair of particular properties, thusly:

myObjectCollection.Select(item=>new
                                {
                                     Alpha = item.propOne,
                                     Bravo = item.propTwo
                                }
                 ).Distinct();

So my question is: Will Distinct in this case use the default object equals (which will be useless to me, since each object is new) or can it be told to do a different equals (in this case, equal values of Alpha and Bravo => equal instances)? Is there any way to achieve that result, if this doesn't do it?

Have a read through K. Scott Allen's excellent post here:

And Equality for All ... Anonymous Types

The short answer (and I quote):

Turns out the C# compiler overrides Equals and GetHashCode for anonymous types. The implementation of the two overridden methods uses all the public properties on the type to compute an object's hash code and test for equality. If two objects of the same anonymous type have all the same values for their properties – the objects are equal.

So it's totally safe to use the Distinct() method on a query that returns anonymous types.

public class DelegateComparer<T> : IEqualityComparer<T>
{
    private Func<T, T, bool> _equals;
    private Func<T, int> _hashCode;
    public DelegateComparer(Func<T, T, bool> equals, Func<T, int> hashCode)
    {
        _equals= equals;
        _hashCode = hashCode;
    }
    public bool Equals(T x, T y)
    {
        return _equals(x, y);
    }

    public int GetHashCode(T obj)
    {
        if(_hashCode!=null)
            return _hashCode(obj);
        return obj.GetHashCode();
    }       
}

public static class Extensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<T> Distinct<T>(this IEnumerable<T> items, 
        Func<T, T, bool> equals, Func<T,int> hashCode)
    {
        return items.Distinct(new DelegateComparer<T>(equals, hashCode));    
    }
    public static IEnumerable<T> Distinct<T>(this IEnumerable<T> items,
        Func<T, T, bool> equals)
    {
        return items.Distinct(new DelegateComparer<T>(equals,null));
    }
}

var uniqueItems=students.Select(s=> new {FirstName=s.FirstName, LastName=s.LastName})
            .Distinct((a,b) => a.FirstName==b.FirstName, c => c.FirstName.GetHashCode()).ToList();

Sorry for the messed up formatting earlier

Interesting that it works in C# but not in VB

Returns the 26 letters:

var MyBet = "aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZ";
MyBet.ToCharArray()
.Select(x => new {lower = x.ToString().ToLower(), upper = x.ToString().ToUpper()})
.Distinct()
.Dump();

Returns 52...

Dim MyBet = "aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZ"
MyBet.ToCharArray() _
.Select(Function(x) New With {.lower = x.ToString.ToLower(), .upper = x.ToString.ToUpper()}) _
.Distinct() _
.Dump()

I ran a little test and found that if the properties are value types, it seems to work ok. If they are not value types, then the type needs provide it's own Equals and GetHashCode implementations for it to work. Strings, I would think, would work.

LINQ Select Distinct with Anonymous Types

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