LINQ: Distinct values

Are you trying to be distinct by more than one field? If so, just use an anonymous type and the Distinct operator and it should be okay:

var query = doc.Elements("whatever")
               .Select(element => new {
                             id = (int) element.Attribute("id"),
                             category = (int) element.Attribute("cat") })
               .Distinct();

If you're trying to get a distinct set of values of a "larger" type, but only looking at some subset of properties for the distinctness aspect, you probably want DistinctBy as implemented in MoreLINQ in DistinctBy.cs:

 public static IEnumerable<TSource> DistinctBy<TSource, TKey>(
     this IEnumerable<TSource> source,
     Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector,
     IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
 {
     HashSet<TKey> knownKeys = new HashSet<TKey>(comparer);
     foreach (TSource element in source)
     {
         if (knownKeys.Add(keySelector(element)))
         {
             yield return element;
         }
     }
 }

(If you pass in null as the comparer, it will use the default comparer for the key type.)

Just use the Distinct() with your own comparer.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb338049.aspx

In addition to Jon Skeet's answer, you can also use the group by expressions to get the unique groups along w/ a count for each groups iterations:

var query = from e in doc.Elements("whatever")
            group e by new { id = e.Key, val = e.Value } into g
            select new { id = g.Key.id, val = g.Key.val, count = g.Count() };

// First Get DataTable as dt
// DataRowComparer Compare columns numbers in each row & data in each row

IEnumerable<DataRow> Distinct = dt.AsEnumerable().Distinct(DataRowComparer.Default);

foreach (DataRow row in Distinct)
{
    Console.WriteLine("{0,-15} {1,-15}",
        row.Field<int>(0),
        row.Field<string>(1)); 
}

Since we are talking about having every element exactly once, a "set" makes more sense to me.

Example with classes and IEqualityComparer implemented:

 public class Product
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }

        public Product(int x, string y)
        {
            Id = x;
            Name = y;
        }
    }

    public class ProductCompare : IEqualityComparer<Product>
    {
        public bool Equals(Product x, Product y)
        {  //Check whether the compared objects reference the same data.
            if (Object.ReferenceEquals(x, y)) return true;

            //Check whether any of the compared objects is null.
            if (Object.ReferenceEquals(x, null) || Object.ReferenceEquals(y, null))
                return false;

            //Check whether the products' properties are equal.
            return x.Id == y.Id && x.Name == y.Name;
        }
        public int GetHashCode(Product product)
        {
            //Check whether the object is null
            if (Object.ReferenceEquals(product, null)) return 0;

            //Get hash code for the Name field if it is not null.
            int hashProductName = product.Name == null ? 0 : product.Name.GetHashCode();

            //Get hash code for the Code field.
            int hashProductCode = product.Id.GetHashCode();

            //Calculate the hash code for the product.
            return hashProductName ^ hashProductCode;
        }
    }

Now

List<Product> originalList = new List<Product> {new Product(1, "ad"), new Product(1, "ad")};
var setList = new HashSet<Product>(originalList, new ProductCompare()).ToList();

setList will have unique elements

I thought of this while dealing with .Except() which returns a set-difference