What is the meaning of a set in Python?
In Python, a set is a data structure used to store an unordered collection of unique elements. It is represented by a pair of curly braces {}, with elements separated by commas. Elements in a set have no fixed order and are unique, meaning it can be used to eliminate duplicate elements.
The main features of Set include:
- Duplicates are not allowed: The elements in a Set are unique, and if an attempt is made to add a duplicate element, only one copy will be retained.
- The elements in a set do not have a specific order and cannot be accessed by index.
- Mutability: Sets are mutable, allowing for the addition, removal, and updating of elements.
- Support basic set operations, such as union, intersection, difference, and symmetric difference.
Set is commonly used in Python to remove duplicate elements from a list, determine if two sets have any intersection, and perform mathematical operations on sets.