The opposite of Intersect()

Solution 1:

As stated, if you want to get 4 as the result, you can do like this:

var nonintersect = array2.Except(array1);

If you want the real non-intersection (also both 1 and 4), then this should do the trick:

var nonintersect = array1.Except(array2).Union( array2.Except(array1));

This will not be the most performant solution, but for small lists it should work just fine.

Solution 2:

You can use

a.Except(b).Union(b.Except(a));

Or you can use

var difference = new HashSet(a);
difference.SymmetricExceptWith(b);

Solution 3:

This code enumerates each sequence only once and uses Select(x => x) to hide the result to get a clean Linq-style extension method. Since it uses HashSet<T> its runtime is O(n + m) if the hashes are well distributed. Duplicate elements in either list are omitted.

public static IEnumerable<T> SymmetricExcept<T>(this IEnumerable<T> seq1,
    IEnumerable<T> seq2)
{
    HashSet<T> hashSet = new HashSet<T>(seq1);
    hashSet.SymmetricExceptWith(seq2);
    return hashSet.Select(x => x);
}