Verify if two lists share values in C# - c#-4.0

Question

I'd like to know if two lists share values before applying an intersection. Something like bool DoIntersect(listA, listB) would be fabulous!
This is the code I came up with:
// Person is a class with Id and Name properties
List<Person> people1;
List<Person> people2;
// Populate people1 and people2...
// My current solution (pseudocode obviously)...
if (DoIntersect(people1, people2))
{
people1 = people1.Intersect(people2)
}
else
{
/* No shared people */
throw exception;
}
// Continue with the process...

Answer 1

It depends on exactly what you want:
// are there any common values between a and b?
public static bool SharesAnyValueWith<T>(this IEnumerable<T> a, IEnumerable<T> b)
{
return a.Intersect(b).Any();
}
For lists that don't overlap, this will iterate through a and b each once. For lists that overlap, this will iterate all the way through a, then through b until the first overlapping element is found.
// does a contain all of b? (ignores duplicates)
public static bool ContainsAllFrom<T>(this IEnumerable<T> a, IEnumerable<T> b)
{
return !b.Except(a).Any();
}
This will iterate through a once, then will iterate through b, stopping on the first element in b not in a.
// does a contain all of b? (considers duplicates)
public static bool ContainsAllFrom<T>(this IEnumerable<T> a, IEnumerable<T> b)
{
// get the count of each distinct element in a
var counts = a.GroupBy(t => t).ToDictionary(g => g.Key, g => g.Count());
foreach (var t in b) {
int count;
// if t isn't in a or has too few occurrences return false. Otherwise, reduce
// the count by 1
if (!counts.TryGetValue(t, out count) || count == 0) { return false; }
counts[t] = count - 1;
}
return true;
}
Similarly, this will iterate through a once, then will iterate through b, stopping on the first element in b not in a.

Answer 2

I believe without altering the fact that you're using a List you can't get better performance.
However, if you would have 2 sorted lists to begin with (requires overhead when creating them), then you could iterate through them with complexity of O(n) in order to find out if you have shared values.
Edit:
Although original OP doesn't have 2 sorted lists, in case someone will need it, here is the implementation for checking Intersection at O(n):
public Boolean DoIntersect(SortedList<int,String> listA,SortedList<int,String> listB )
{
if (listA == null || listA.Count == 0 || listB == null || listB.Count == 0)
{
return false;
}
var keysA = listA.Keys;
var keysB = listB.Keys;
int i = 0, j = 0;
while (i < listA.Count && j < listB.Count)
{
if (keysA[i] < keysB[j])
{
i++;
}else if (keysA[i] > keysB[j])
{
j++;
}
else
{
return true;
}
}
The above approach can be used also with IEnumerable lists, given that they are sorted, with slight variation - using GetEnumerator and iterating with it.