Sets

Sets are a datatype that allows you to store other immutable types in an unsorted way. An item can only be contained in a set once. There are no duplicates allowed. The benefits of a set are: very fast membership testing along with being able to use powerful set operations, like union, difference, and intersection.

set cheat sheet

type set
use Used for storing immutable data types uniquely. Easy to compare the items in sets.
creation set() for an empty set ({} makes an empty dict) and {1, 2, 3} for a set with items in it
search methods item in my_set
search speed Searching for an item in a large set is very fast.
common methods my_set.add(item), my_set.discard(item) to remove the item if it’s present, my_set.update(other_set)
order preserved? No. Items can’t be accessed by index.
mutable? Yes. Can add to or remove from sets.
in-place sortable? No, because items aren’t ordered.

Examples

Empty sets

Let’s create our first few sets.

The first thing we might try to do is create an empty set with {}, but we’ll come across a hurdle.

>>> my_new_set = {}
>>> type(my_new_set)
<class 'dict'>
>>> my_set = set()
>>> type(my_set)
<class 'set'>

You can’t create an empty set with {}. That creates a dict. Create an empty set with set() instead.

While you’re learning Python, it’s useful to use type(), dir() and help() as often as possible.

sets with items

Now, let’s make a new set with some items in it, and test out important set concepts.

sets can’t contain duplicate values

>>> names = {"Nina", "Max", "Nina"}
>>> names
{'Max', 'Nina'}
>>> len(names)
2

sets can’t contain mutable types

The way that sets allow you to quickly check if an item is contained in them or not is with an algorithm called a hash. I won’t cover the details, but an algorithm is a way of representing an immutable data type with a unique numerical representation. In Python, there’s a built-in hash() function.

The hash() function only works on immutable data types. That means, data types where the contents can’t be changed after creation.

>>> hash("Nina")
3509074130763756174
>>> hash([])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unhashable type: 'list'

You’ll see a TypeError: unhashable type: 'list' if you try to add a mutable data type (like a list) to a set.

If you try to add a mutable data type (like a list) to a set, you’ll see the same TypeError, complaining about an unhashable type.

>>> {"Nina"}
{'Nina'}
>>> {[]}
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unhashable type: 'list'

sets can be used to de-duplicate the items in a list

Tip: If you don’t care about order, you can quickly de-duplicate the items in a list by passing the list into the set constructor.

>>> colors = ["Red", "Yellow", "Red", "Green", "Green", "Green"]
>>> set(colors)
{'Red', 'Green', 'Yellow'}

sets don’t have an order

Sets don’t have an order. That means that when you print them, the items won’t be displayed in the order they were entered in the list.

>>> my_set = {1, "a", 2, "b", "cat"}
>>> my_set
{1, 2, 'cat', 'a', 'b'}

It also means that you can’t access items in the set by position in subscript [] notation.

>>> my_set = {"Red", "Green", "Blue"}
>>> my_set[0]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'set' object does not support indexing

You’ll see TypeError: 'set' object does not support indexing if you try to access the items in a set by index with my_set[pos]

Tip: If your set contains items of the same type, and you want to sort the items, you’ll need to convert the set to a list first. Or, you can use the built-in sorted(sequence) method, which will do the conversion for you.

>>> my_set = {"a", "b", "cat", "dog", "red"}
>>> my_set
{'b', 'red', 'a', 'cat', 'dog'}
>>> sorted(my_set)
['a', 'b', 'cat', 'dog', 'red']

adding to and removing from sets

Since a set has no order, we can’t add or remove items to it by index. We need to call the operations with the item itself.

Add items to a set with my_set.add(item).
>>> colors = {"Red", "Green", "Blue"}
>>> colors.add("Orange")
>>> colors
{'Orange', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Red'}
Remove items with my_set.discard(item)

You can remove an item from a set if it’s present with my_set.discard(item). If the set doesn’t contain the item, no error occurs.

>>> colors = {"Red", "Green", "Blue"}
>>> colors.discard("Green")
>>> colors
{'Blue', 'Red'}
>>> colors.discard("Green")
>>> colors
{'Blue', 'Red'}

You can also remove items from a set with my_set.remove(item), which will raise a KeyError if the item doesn’t exist.

Update a set with another sequence using my_set.update(sequence)

You can update a set by passing in another sequence, meaning another set, list, or tuple.

>>> colors = {"Red", "Green"}
>>> numbers = {1, 3, 5}
>>> colors.update(numbers)
>>> colors
{1, 3, 'Red', 5, 'Green'}

Be careful passing in a string to my_set.update(sequence). That’s because a string is also a sequence. It’s a sequence of characters.

>>> numbers = {1, 3, 5}
>>> numbers.update("hello")
>>> numbers
{1, 3, 'h', 5, 'o', 'e', 'l'}

Your set will update with each character of the string, which was probably not your intended result.

set operations

sets allow quick and easy operations to compare items between two sets.

set operations cheat sheet

method operation symbol operation result
s.union(t) s | t creates a new set with all the items from both s and t
s.intersection(t) s & t creates a new set containing only items that are both in s and in t
s.difference(t) s ^ t creates a new set containing items that are not in both s and in t

examples

Let’s see it in action.

We have two sets, rainbow_colors, which contain the colors of the rainbow, and favorite_colors, which contain my favorite colors.

>>> rainbow_colors = {"Red", "Orange", "Yellow", "Green", "Blue", "Violet"}
>>> favorite_colors = {"Blue", "Pink", "Black"}

First, let’s combine the sets and create a new set that contains all of the items from rainbow_colors and favorite_colors using the union operation. You can use the my_set.union(other_set) method, or you can just use the symbol for union |= from the table above.

>>> rainbow_colors | favorite_colors
{'Orange', 'Red', 'Yellow', 'Green', 'Violet', 'Blue', 'Black', 'Pink'}

Next, let’s find the intersection. We’ll create a new set with only the items in both sets.

>>> rainbow_colors & favorite_colors
{'Blue'}

Lastly, We can also find the difference. Create a new set with the items that are in in one, but not the other. We’ll see that "Blue" is missing from the list.

>>> rainbow_colors ^ favorite_colors
{'Orange', 'Red', 'Yellow', 'Green', 'Violet', 'Black', 'Pink'}

There are other useful operations available on sets, such as checking if one set is a subset, a superset, and more, but I don’t have time to cover them all. Python also has a frozenset type, if you need the functionality of a set in an immutable package (meaning that the contents can’t be changed after creation).

Find out more by reading the documentation, or calling help() on set.