The opposite of Intersect()

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);
}

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.


I think you might be looking for Except:

The Except operator produces the set difference between two sequences. It will only return elements in the first sequence that don't appear in the second. You can optionally provide your own equality comparison function.

Check out this link, this link, or Google, for more information.


You can use

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

Or you can use

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