Question

I need to compare two xml documents.

Assume that each of the following XElement’s load from a Stream:

XElement actualElement = XElement.Load(actual);
XElement expectedElement = XElement.Load(expected);

Using that, which of the following two is better:

XNodeEqualityComparer comparer = new XNodeEqualityComparer();
comparer.Equals(actualElement, expectedElement);

or

XElement.DeepEquals(actualElement, expectedElement);

I know that the second option is shorter, but I am more interested in whether or not you get any speed improvements or better/deeper comparison when using one or the other. The comparison itself needs to compare the elements, attributes, and all values between the two xml documents.

Answer 1

The XNodeEqualityComparer.Equals method simply calls the XNode.DeepEquals method. So there is no difference between the two calls.