Merging dictionaries in C#

Question

What's the best way to merge 2 or more dictionaries (Dictionary<T1,T2>) in C#? (3.0 features like LINQ are fine).

I'm thinking of a method signature along the lines of:

public static Dictionary<TKey,TValue>
                 Merge<TKey,TValue>(Dictionary<TKey,TValue>[] dictionaries);

or

public static Dictionary<TKey,TValue>
                 Merge<TKey,TValue>(IEnumerable<Dictionary<TKey,TValue>> dictionaries);

EDIT: Got a cool solution from JaredPar and Jon Skeet, but I was thinking of something that handles duplicate keys. In case of collision, it doesn't matter which value is saved to the dict as long as it's consistent.

Answer 1

@Tim: Should be a comment, but comments don't allow for code editing.

Dictionary<string, string> t1 = new Dictionary<string, string>();
t1.Add("a", "aaa");
Dictionary<string, string> t2 = new Dictionary<string, string>();
t2.Add("b", "bee");
Dictionary<string, string> t3 = new Dictionary<string, string>();
t3.Add("c", "cee");
t3.Add("d", "dee");
t3.Add("b", "bee");
Dictionary<string, string> merged = t1.MergeLeft(t2, t2, t3);

Note: I applied the modification by @ANeves to the solution by @Andrew Orsich, so the MergeLeft looks like this now:

public static Dictionary<K, V> MergeLeft<K, V>(this Dictionary<K, V> me, params IDictionary<K, V>[] others)
    {
        var newMap = new Dictionary<K, V>(me, me.Comparer);
        foreach (IDictionary<K, V> src in
            (new List<IDictionary<K, V>> { me }).Concat(others))
        {
            // ^-- echk. Not quite there type-system.
            foreach (KeyValuePair<K, V> p in src)
            {
                newMap[p.Key] = p.Value;
            }
        }
        return newMap;
    }

Answer 2

Got scared to see complex answers, being new to C#.

Here are some simple answers.
Merging d1, d2, and so on.. dictionaries and handle any overlapping keys ("b" in below examples):

Example 1

{
    // 2 dictionaries,  "b" key is common with different values

    var d1 = new Dictionary<string, int>() { { "a", 10 }, { "b", 21 } };
    var d2 = new Dictionary<string, int>() { { "c", 30 }, { "b", 22 } };

    var result1 = d1.Concat(d2).GroupBy(ele => ele.Key).ToDictionary(ele => ele.Key, ele => ele.First().Value);
    // result1 is  a=10, b=21, c=30    That is, took the "b" value of the first dictionary

    var result2 = d1.Concat(d2).GroupBy(ele => ele.Key).ToDictionary(ele => ele.Key, ele => ele.Last().Value);
    // result2 is  a=10, b=22, c=30    That is, took the "b" value of the last dictionary
}

Example 2

{
    // 3 dictionaries,  "b" key is common with different values

    var d1 = new Dictionary<string, int>() { { "a", 10 }, { "b", 21 } };
    var d2 = new Dictionary<string, int>() { { "c", 30 }, { "b", 22 } };
    var d3 = new Dictionary<string, int>() { { "d", 40 }, { "b", 23 } };

    var result1 = d1.Concat(d2).Concat(d3).GroupBy(ele => ele.Key).ToDictionary(ele => ele.Key, ele => ele.First().Value);
    // result1 is  a=10, b=21, c=30, d=40    That is, took the "b" value of the first dictionary

    var result2 = d1.Concat(d2).Concat(d3).GroupBy(ele => ele.Key).ToDictionary(ele => ele.Key, ele => ele.Last().Value);
    // result2 is  a=10, b=23, c=30, d=40    That is, took the "b" value of the last dictionary
}

For more complex scenarios, see other answers.
Hope that helped.