The IComparable interface defines
the CompareTo method, which determines
the sort order of instances of the
implementing type. The IEquatable
interface defines the Equals method,
which determines the equality of
instances of the implementing type.
You might implement IComparable without implementing IEquatable for a class where a partial ordering makes sense, and where you very definitely want the consumer to infer that just because CompareTo() returns zero, this does not imply that the objects are equal (for anything other than sorting purposes).
IComparable <T> defines a type specific comparison method which can be used to order or sort objects.
IEquatable <T> defines a generalized method which can be used to implement for determining equality.
Let's say you have Person class
public class Person
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
}
Person p1 = new Person() { Name = "Person 1", Age = 34 };
Person p2 = new Person() { Name = "Person 2", Age = 31 };
Person p3 = new Person() { Name = "Person 3", Age = 33 };
Person p4 = new Person() { Name = "Person 4", Age = 26 };
List<Person> people = new List<Person> { p1, p2, p3, p4 };
To sort these objects you can use people.Sort();.
But this will thrown an an exception.
Framework doesn't know how to sort these objects. You need to tell how to sort implementing IComparable interface.
public class Person : IComparable
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
public int CompareTo(object obj)
{
Person otherPerson = obj as Person;
if (otherPerson == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException();
}
else
{
return Age.CompareTo(otherPerson.Age);
}
}
}
This will sort the array properly with Sort() method.
Next to compare two objects you can use Equals() method.
var newPerson = new Person() { Name = "Person 1", Age = 34 };
var newPersonIsPerson1 = newPerson.Equals(p1);
This will return false because Equals method doesn't know how to compare two objects. Therefore you need to implement IEquatable interface and tell the framework how to do the comparison. Extending on the previous example it'll look like this.
public class Person : IComparable, IEquatable<Person>
{
//Some code hidden
public bool Equals(Person other)
{
if (Age == other.Age && Name == other.Name)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
}