LINQ Set Operations (Distinct, Union, Intersect, Except)

In LINQ, Set Operators are useful to return result set based on the presence or absence of equivalent elements within the same or separate collections.

 

In LINQ, we have different types of set operators available those are:

 

These set operators will perform different operators like removing duplicate elements from the collections or combining all the elements of collections, or leaving some elements from the collection based on our requirements.

 

The following table shows more details related to set operators in LINQ.

 

OperatorDescription
UNION It combines multiple collections into a single collection and returns a resultant collection with unique elements.
INTERSECT It returns sequence elements that are common in both the input sequences
DISTINCT It removes duplicate elements from the collection and returns them with unique values.
EXCEPT It returns sequence elements from the first input sequence not present in the second input sequence.

In the coming chapters, we will discuss each set operator in detail with examples.