How to select a subsequence of a list based on unique value in a property

Question

I have a class and a list of it like this:

public class Person {
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public DateTime Birthday { get; set; }
}

// and my list is:
var persons = new List<Person>();
persons.add(/* add for example 20 person here */);

These persons may have duplicate FirstName and LastName. I want to select a subsequence of persons that all FirstName vs LastName are diferent. I mean my primary-key (in a relational db vision) is FirstName + LastName.

I know I can do this by iterating the list. But I'm asking a LINQ solution. Is there any one? May I select the specified subsequence by LINQ? Any idea please?

Answer 1

Create a Lookup<TKey, TElement> Class based on FirstName+LastName key and take only the first from each subcollection (as soon as you never said anything about it's rder or something) through Enumerable.ToLookup Method and Enumerable.Select Method:

var result = persons.ToLookup(p => string.Concat(p.FirstName, p.LastName))
                    .Select(l => l.First());