Compare two DataTables to determine rows in one but not the other

Question

I have two DataTables, A and B, produced from CSV files. I need to be able to check which rows exist in B that do not exist in A.

Is there a way to do some sort of query to show the different rows or would I have to iterate through each row on each DataTable to check if they are the same? The latter option seems to be very intensive if the tables become large.

Answer 1

Assuming you have an ID column which is of an appropriate type (i.e. gives a hashcode and implements equality) - string in this example, which is slightly pseudocode because I'm not that familiar with DataTables and don't have time to look it all up just now :)

IEnumerable<string> idsInA = tableA.AsEnumerable().Select(row => (string)row["ID"]);
IEnumerable<string> idsInB = tableB.AsEnumerable().Select(row => (string)row["ID"]);
IEnumerable<string> bNotA = idsInB.Except(idsInA);