A set is a special object that works similar to sets in mathematics. As such, all elements (values) in the set must be unique. Elements can be of a different types.

To create a set, you just define the variable name, and specify that it = set(), to create an empty set, or pass it a value. If you pass in a list, your set will contain each element of the list. If you pass in a string, it will separate the letters into the individual characters for the string to add to the set.

my_set = set() # creates an empty set
char_set = set('abc') # creates a set of a, b, c
char_set = set('aaabbbccc') # creates a set of a, b, c since elements cannot be duplicated
list_set = set([1,2,3]) # creates a list of 1,2,3

If you want to create a set of strings of words, you will need to put those words in a list, and then load the list.

words = ['one', 'two', 'three']
word_set = set(words)

Defining Python’s Set was originally found on Access 2 Learn

Assistant Professor

Walter Wimberly is an Assistant Professor at a regional college in Tennessee, teaching Computer Science in the Software Engineering track. He works as a student advisor, oversees curriculum changes, develops new courses, and manages the advisory panel.
Walter taught full time for about 7 years, before going back into “industry” as a full stack Software Developer for a dozen years. There he focused on web based projects coding in JavaScript/jQuery and utilizing the Bootstrap CSS Framework on the front-end, and coding in PHP, ASP/ASP.Net, SQL on the back-end.

Since he loves teaching, he taught as an adjunct web and digital media classes for eight (8) years, while working in industry, and has since returned to teaching full time.

He has been married for over 25 years, and is father to several special needs boys. As such, he is working on some projects to help others who have special needs to be self-sufficient, and support the care givers of those with special needs. Check out his Autism blog for more info.

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