If you Google “Python set intersection”, you get a number of results about the set.intersection function. It isn’t until the fourth result that you reach a page mentioning Python’s convenient syntax for performing set operations. This was surprising to me, hence this snippet.
Background: Collections in Python
Python has a few primitive collection types: tuples, lists, dictionaries (aka dicts), and sets. Use parenthesis to create a tuple (1, 2, 3), square brackets to create a list [4, 5, 6], and squirrelly brackets to create a dict or set: {7: 8, 9: 10} makes a dict and {11, 12, 13} makes a set. Just like a set in mathematics, a set in Python is an unordered collection of distinct elements.
Convenient Syntax
Once you’ve constructed a set, the following operations allow you to perform set operations on it with clean concise syntax.
| for union.
& for intersection.
– for difference
^ for symmetric difference
Operation Examples
Here are some examples:
# Example 1: Disjoint sets (sets that have no elements in common)
{1, 2, 3} | {4, 5, 6} == {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
{1, 2, 3} & {4, 5, 6} == set()
{1, 2, 3} - {4, 5, 6} == {1, 2, 3}
{1, 2, 3} ^ {4, 5, 6} == {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
Notice how we cannot write {} to create an empty set. That would create an empty dict. Instead we write set(). (You can also write tuple(), list(), and dict() to create empty tuples, lists, or dicts.)
# Example 2: Overlapping sets
{'red', 'green', 'blue'} | {'blue', 'yellow'} == {'red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow'}
{'red', 'green', 'blue'} & {'blue', 'yellow'} == {'blue'}
{'red', 'green', 'blue'} - {'blue', 'yellow'} == {'red', 'green'}
{'red', 'green', 'blue'} ^ {'blue', 'yellow'} == {'red', 'yellow', 'green'}
Set augment operations
Each of the operations |, &, -, and ^ has a corresponding “augment” operation: |=, &=, -=, and ^=.
When you use an augment operation, the operation is applied and the result is assigned back to the variable on the left hand side of the operation.
Here’s an example of how to use these operations:
# Example 3: Set augment operations (|=, &=, -=, and ^=)
x = {1, 2, 3}
x |= {3, 4, 5}
print(x) # {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
x &= {4, 5, 6}
print(x) # {4, 5}
x -= {5, 6, 7}
print(x) # {4}
x ^= {6, 7, 8}
print(x) # {4, 6, 7, 8}
Set elements must be hashable
Remember, sets can contain any elements as long as they are hashable. So, a set can contain numbers, strings, and bools. A set can also contain tuples, but not lists or dicts or other sets. If you want a set to contain a dict or another set, you can use a “frozendict” or “frozenset”, which are immutable hashable versions of dicts and sets.
To check if an object x is hashable, you can run hash(x). This will return the hash of x if x can be hashed, and will raise a TypeError otherwise.