Comparing two collections for equality irrespective of the order of items in them

Question

I would like to compare two collections (in C#), but I\'m not sure of the best way to implement this efficiently.

I\'ve read the other thread about Enumerable.Sequen

Answer 1

Allowing for duplicates in the IEnumerable (if sets are not desirable\possible) and "ignoring order" you should be able to use a .GroupBy().

I'm not an expert on the complexity measurements, but my rudimentary understanding is that this should be O(n). I understand O(n^2) as coming from performing an O(n) operation inside another O(n) operation like ListA.Where(a => ListB.Contains(a)).ToList(). Every item in ListB is evaluated for equality against each item in ListA.

Like I said, my understanding on complexity is limited, so correct me on this if I'm wrong.

public static bool IsSameAs(this IEnumerable source, IEnumerable target, Expression> keySelectorExpression)
    {
        // check the object
        if (source == null && target == null) return true;
        if (source == null || target == null) return false;

        var sourceList = source.ToList();
        var targetList = target.ToList();

        // check the list count :: { 1,1,1 } != { 1,1,1,1 }
        if (sourceList.Count != targetList.Count) return false;

        var keySelector = keySelectorExpression.Compile();
        var groupedSourceList = sourceList.GroupBy(keySelector).ToList();
        var groupedTargetList = targetList.GroupBy(keySelector).ToList();

        // check that the number of grouptings match :: { 1,1,2,3,4 } != { 1,1,2,3,4,5 }
        var groupCountIsSame = groupedSourceList.Count == groupedTargetList.Count;
        if (!groupCountIsSame) return false;

        // check that the count of each group in source has the same count in target :: for values { 1,1,2,3,4 } & { 1,1,1,2,3,4 }
        // key:count
        // { 1:2, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 } != { 1:3, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 }
        var countsMissmatch = groupedSourceList.Any(sourceGroup =>
                                                        {
                                                            var targetGroup = groupedTargetList.Single(y => y.Key.Equals(sourceGroup.Key));
                                                            return sourceGroup.Count() != targetGroup.Count();
                                                        });
        return !countsMissmatch;
    }