Systems Analysis and Synthesis

2.6. Representing Sets

Most readers will be familiar with the programming techniques described below; they are included here to reinforce the notion of ‘set’ in a programming context, thereby integrating many different data structures into a single concept.

In computer languages that support multiple assignments to variables,²¹ a set is stored as a dynamic, or modifiable, object. Set representations should support several operations, including adding an element to a set, removing an existing member from a set, testing if a given element is a member of a set, enumerating the members of a set, finding the union, intersection, etc., of two sets, and testing if two sets overlap, are disjoint, etc. There is no universal best way to represent a set; ...