Python: Journey from Novice to Expert

Set types

Python also provides two set types, set and frozenset. The set type is mutable, while frozenset is immutable. They are unordered collections of immutable objects.

Hashability is a characteristic that allows an object to be used as a set member as well as a key for a dictionary, as we'll see very soon.

Note

An object is hashable if it has a hash value which never changes during its lifetime.

Objects that compare equally must have the same hash value. Sets are very commonly used to test for membership, so let's introduce the in operator in the following example:

>>> small_primes = set()  # empty set
>>> small_primes.add(2)  # adding one element at a time
>>> small_primes.add(3)
>>> small_primes.add(5)
>>> small_primes
{2, 3, 5}
>>> small_primes.add(1) ...