Sets in Python | Operations on Sets | Cheat Sheet

 

Sets

Unordered collection of items.

Every set element is

• Unique (no duplicates)
• Must be immutable

Creating a Set

• Created by enclosing elements within {curly} brackets.
• Each item is separated by a comma.

Code

a = 2
set_a = {5, "Six", a, 8.2}
print(type(set_a))
print(set_a)

Output

<class ‘set’>
{8.2, 2, ‘Six’, 5}

Need not be in the same order as defined.

No Duplicate Items

Sets contain unique elements

Code

set_a = {"a", "b", "c", "a"}
print(set_a)

Output

{‘b’, ‘a’, ‘c’}

Immutable Items

Set items must be immutable. As List is mutable, Set cannot have list as an item.

Code

set_a = {"a", ["c", "a"]}
print(set_a)

Output

TypeError: unhashable type: ‘list’

Creating Empty Set

We use

set() to create an empty set.

Code

set_a = set()
print(type(set_a))
print(set_a)

Output

<class ‘set’>
set()

Converting to Set

set(sequence) takes any sequence as argument and converts to set, avoiding duplicates

List to Set

Code

set_a = set([1,2,1])
print(type(set_a))
print(set_a)

Output

<class ‘set’>
{1, 2}

String to Set

Code

set_a = set("apple")
print(set_a)

Output

{‘l’, ‘p’, ‘e’, ‘a’}

Tuple to Set

Code

set_a = set((1, 2, 1))
print(set_a)

Output

{1, 2}

Accessing Items

As sets are unordered, we cannot access or change an item of a set using

• Indexing
• Slicing

Code

set_a = {1, 2, 3}
print(set_a[1])
print(set_a[1:3])

Output

TypeError: ‘set’ object is not subscriptable

Adding Items

set.add(value) adds the item to the set, if the item is not present already.

Code

set_a = {1, 3, 6, 2, 9}
set_a.add(7)
print(set_a)

output

{1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9}

Adding Multiple Items

set.update(sequence) adds multiple items to the set, and duplicates are avoided.

Code

set_a = {1, 3, 9}
set_a.update([2, 3])
print(set_a)

Output

{2, 1, 3, 9}

Removing Specific Item

set.discard(value) takes a single value and removes if present.

Code

set_a = {1, 3, 9}
set_a.discard(3)
print(set_a)

Output

{1, 9}

set_a.remove(value) takes a value and remove if it present or raise an error.

Code

set_a = {1, 3, 9}
set_a.remove(5)
print(set_a)

Output

KeyError: 5

Operations on Sets

You can perform the following operations on Sets

• clear()
• len()
• Iterating
• Membership Check