[Python-Dev] Efficient set complement and operation on large/infinite sets. (original) (raw)

Terry Jones terry at jon.es
Fri May 12 01:51:12 CEST 2006

"Guido" == Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes: Guido> Hm... Without reading though all this, I expect that you'd be Guido> better off implementing this for yourself without attempting to pull Guido> the standard library sets into the picture (especially since sets.py Guido> is obsolete as of 2.4; set and frozenset are now built-in types). Guido> You're really after rather specialized set representations. I've Guido> done this myself and as long as you stick to solving just the Guido> problem at hand, it's easy. If you want a general solution, it's Guido> hard...

I certainly would be better off in the short term, and probably the long term too. It's likely what I'll do in any case as it's much, much quicker, I only need a handful of the set operations, and I don't need to talk to anyone :-)

I don't think I'm proposing something specialized. Set complement is something one learns in primary school. It's just difficult to provide in general, as you say.

Aside from my own itch, which I know how to scratch, my question is whether it's worth trying to work this into Python itself. Sounds like not.

Terry

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