Fastest way to find common items across multiple lists in C#

Question

Given the following:

List> optionLists;

what would be a quick way to determine the subset of Option objects that a

Answer 1

@Skizz The method is not correct. It returns also items that are not common to all the lists in items. Here is the corrected method:

/// 
.
    /// The method FindAllCommonItemsInAllTheLists, returns a HashSet that contains all the common items in the lists contained in the listOfLists,
    /// regardless of the order of the items in the various lists.
    /// 
    /// 
    /// 
    /// 
    public static HashSet FindAllCommonItemsInAllTheLists(List> listOfLists)
    {
        if (listOfLists == null || listOfLists.Count == 0)
        {
            return null;
        }
        HashSet currentCommon = new HashSet();
        HashSet common = new HashSet();

        foreach (List currentList in listOfLists)
        {
            if (currentCommon.Count == 0)
            {
                foreach (T item in currentList)
                {
                    common.Add(item);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                foreach (T item in currentList)
                {
                    if (currentCommon.Contains(item))
                    {
                        common.Add(item);
                    }
                }
            }
            if (common.Count == 0)
            {
                currentCommon.Clear();
                break;
            }
            currentCommon.Clear(); // Empty currentCommon for a new iteration.
            foreach (T item in common) /* Copy all the items contained in common to currentCommon. 
                                        *            currentCommon = common; 
                                        * does not work because thus currentCommon and common would point at the same object and 
                                        * the next statement: 
                                        *            common.Clear();
                                        * will also clear currentCommon.
                                        */
            {
                if (!currentCommon.Contains(item))
                {
                    currentCommon.Add(item);
                }
            }
            common.Clear();
        }

        return currentCommon;
    }