A set object is an unordered collection of immutable values. Common uses include membership testing, removing duplicates from a sequence, and computing mathematical operations such as intersection, union, difference, and symmetric difference. New in version 2.4.
Like other collections, sets support x in set
,
len(set)
, and for x in set
. Being an
unordered collection, sets do not record element position or order of
insertion. Accordingly, sets do not support indexing, slicing, or
other sequence-like behavior.
There are currently two builtin set types, set and frozenset. The set type is mutable -- the contents can be changed using methods like add() and remove(). Since it is mutable, it has no hash value and cannot be used as either a dictionary key or as an element of another set. The frozenset type is immutable and hashable -- its contents cannot be altered after is created; however, it can be used as a dictionary key or as an element of another set.
Instances of set and frozenset provide the following operations:
Operation | Equivalent | Result |
---|---|---|
len(s) |
cardinality of set s | |
x in s |
test x for membership in s | |
x not in s |
test x for non-membership in s | |
s.issubset(t) |
s <= t |
test whether every element in s is in t |
s.issuperset(t) |
s >= t |
test whether every element in t is in s |
s.union(t) |
s | t | new set with elements from both s and t |
s.intersection(t) |
s & t | new set with elements common to s and t |
s.difference(t) |
s - t | new set with elements in s but not in t |
s.symmetric_difference(t) |
s ^ t | new set with elements in either s or t but not both |
s.copy() |
new set with a shallow copy of s |
Note, the non-operator versions of union(), intersection(),
difference(), and symmetric_difference(),
issubset(), and issuperset() methods will accept any
iterable as an argument. In contrast, their operator based counterparts
require their arguments to be sets. This precludes error-prone constructions
like set('abc') & 'cbs'
in favor of the more readable
set('abc').intersection('cbs')
.
Both set and frozenset support set to set comparisons. Two sets are equal if and only if every element of each set is contained in the other (each is a subset of the other). A set is less than another set if and only if the first set is a proper subset of the second set (is a subset, but is not equal). A set is greater than another set if and only if the first set is a proper superset of the second set (is a superset, but is not equal).
Instances of set are compared to instances of frozenset based
on their members. For example, "set('abc') == frozenset('abc')" returns
True
.
The subset and equality comparisons do not generalize to a complete
ordering function. For example, any two disjoint sets are not equal and
are not subsets of each other, so all of the following return
False
: a<b
, a==b
, or
a>b
.
Accordingly, sets do not implement the __cmp__ method.
Since sets only define partial ordering (subset relationships), the output of the list.sort() method is undefined for lists of sets.
Set elements are like dictionary keys; they need to define both __hash__ and __eq__ methods.
Binary operations that mix set instances with frozenset return the type of the first operand. For example: "frozenset('ab') | set('bc')" returns an instance of frozenset.
The following table lists operations available for set that do not apply to immutable instances of frozenset:
Operation | Equivalent | Result |
---|---|---|
s.update(t) |
s |= t | return set s with elements added from t |
s.intersection_update(t) |
s &= t | return set s keeping only elements also found in t |
s.difference_update(t) |
s -= t | return set s after removing elements found in t |
s.symmetric_difference_update(t) |
s ^= t | return set s with elements from s or t but not both |
s.add(x) |
add element x to set s | |
s.remove(x) |
remove x from set s; raises KeyError if not present | |
s.discard(x) |
removes x from set s if present | |
s.pop() |
remove and return an arbitrary element from s; raises KeyError if empty | |
s.clear() |
remove all elements from set s |
Note, the non-operator versions of the update(), intersection_update(), difference_update(), and symmetric_difference_update() methods will accept any iterable as an argument.
The design of the set types was based on lessons learned from the sets module.
See Also:
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