Shyama Sankar Vellore: Python Sets: Cheat Sheet

A cheat sheet for sets in Python. What is the 'set' datatype in Python? How is it used?

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Key points

• Unlike lists and tuples, a set is an unordered collection of unique elements.
• A set can be created using the set() constructor. It takes an optional iterable as input.
• Sets with some elements can also be initialized using the curly braces (e.g., {1, 2, 3}).
• However, curly braces cannot be used to create an empty set. Using empty curly braces, i.e., {}, creates a dictionary datatype in Python.
• 'in' operator can be used to check the presence of an element in a set.
• Sets support the mathematical set operations like union, intersection, difference, symmetric difference, etc.
• Sets are mutable, we can add or remove elements from them.

Cheat sheet

Useful resources and references

• Python documentation for sets

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