How is set() implemented?

Daenyth picture Daenyth · Oct 16, 2010 · Viewed 64.9k times · Source

I've seen people say that set objects in python have O(1) membership-checking. How are they implemented internally to allow this? What sort of data structure does it use? What other implications does that implementation have?

Every answer here was really enlightening, but I can only accept one, so I'll go with the closest answer to my original question. Thanks all for the info!

Answer

Justin Ethier picture Justin Ethier · Oct 16, 2010

According to this thread:

Indeed, CPython's sets are implemented as something like dictionaries with dummy values (the keys being the members of the set), with some optimization(s) that exploit this lack of values

So basically a set uses a hashtable as its underlying data structure. This explains the O(1) membership checking, since looking up an item in a hashtable is an O(1) operation, on average.

If you are so inclined you can even browse the CPython source code for set which, according to Achim Domma, is mostly a cut-and-paste from the dict implementation.