Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Rust

Wrap up

Sets are not complicated, but are useful. While database indices might be B-Trees, the result sets are the sets of primary keys that get moved around and operated on until the very last step, when the associated row information is fetched from disk. These are the moments when set data structures come in handy and provide a simple solution.

Similarly to everyday tasks, creating a list of unique elements can be very inefficient when a list is used; storing them in a set, however, requires no extra effort. In fact, most elements can then just be thrown into the set, which won't insert duplicates anyway.