Python 2.7 – Fundamentals – Collections – Sets

A set is an unordered collection of mixed data types. No duplicates can be there in a set. Sets are declared by enclosing the items in curly brackets with each item separated by a comma.

Operators

The following operators work on sets

• in – membership
• len – length
• | – or
• & – and
•  – – minus
• <= – equivalence

They are examined in detail below:

in – membership

Checks if an item exists in the set

len – length of set

Returns the length of a set. If set has no items then the length is zero

 | – logical or set1 | set2

Combines items of set1 and set2 to create a new set with all the elements of both the sets. Duplicates are ignored

& – logical and set1 & set2

Combines items of set1 and set2 to create a new set with only the common elements in both the sets

 – minus  set1 – set2

Returns all the items in set1 which are not in set2

<= equivalence set1 <= set2

Checks whether all items in set1 are in set2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Methods

Sets also support methods which are the same as their mathematical counterparts, which are shown below:

• union
• intersection
• difference
• issubset
• add
• remove
• pop
• clear

union – set1.union(set2)

Returns elements from both set1 and set2. Duplicates are ignored

intersection – set1.intersection(set1)

Returns only common elements from both set1 and set2.

difference – set1.difference(set2)

Returns elements in set1 which are not in set2.

issubset – set1.issubset(set2)

Returns True if all elements of set1 are in set2, else False

add – set1.add(item)

Adds an item to a set. If an item already exists it is not added

remove – set1.remove(item)

Removes an item from the set. If item does not exist then an error is thrown

pop – set1.pop()

Removes an arbitrary item from the set. Since a set is not ordered, there is no guarantee on which item will be removed

clear – set1.clear()

Removes all the elements from a set

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last collection we will look at are dictionaries.