What is the purpose of "Distinct" method in LINQ?

The Distinct method in LINQ serves the purpose of removing duplicate elements from a collection or sequence. It ensures that only unique items are retained, providing a distinct set of values. This can be particularly useful when you want to eliminate redundancy and work with a unique list of items from your data.

Here's the syntax of the Distinct method in LINQ:

IEnumerable<TSource> result = sequence.Distinct();

• sequence represents the collection or sequence of elements from which you want to remove duplicates.

Here's a complete source code example to illustrate the usage of the Distinct method along with its output:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Collections.Generic;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Create a list of integers with duplicates
        List<int> numbers = new List<int> { 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5 };

        // Use LINQ to obtain distinct values
        IEnumerable<int> distinctNumbers = numbers.Distinct();

        Console.WriteLine("Original list of numbers: " + string.Join(", ", numbers));
        Console.WriteLine("Distinct list of numbers: " + string.Join(", ", distinctNumbers));
    }
}

Output:

Original list of numbers: 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5
Distinct list of numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

In this example, we start with a list of integers called numbers, which contains duplicate values. We use the Distinct method from LINQ to obtain a distinct set of values from this list.

The result is a new sequence called distinctNumbers that contains only the unique values from the original list. In the output, you can see that the Distinct method effectively removed the duplicate values, providing a clean and unique list of numbers.

So, the Distinct method in LINQ is valuable when you need to ensure that your data contains only unique elements, allowing you to work with a clean and distinct set of values.

The Distinct method has the following characteristics:

1. It examines each element in the sequence and returns a new sequence that contains only the unique elements, removing any duplicates.
2. The determination of uniqueness is based on the default equality comparison for the type of elements, unless you provide a custom equality comparer.
3. The result of the Distinct method is an IEnumerable<TSource> that represents the sequence with duplicate elements removed.

The Distinct method is useful when you want to retrieve only the unique elements from a sequence, discarding any duplicates. It is commonly used to eliminate redundant or repetitive elements in collections, allowing you to work with a distinct set of data.