Implementation of sets using sorted lists 1.1

This script implements set operations using sorted lists as the underlying data structure. Advantages: - Space savings -- lists are much more compact than a dictionary based implementation. - Flexibility -- elements do not need to be hashable, only __cmp__ is required. - Fast operations depending on the underlying data patterns. - Non-overlapping sets get united, intersected, or differenced with only log(N) element comparisons.Results are built using fast-slicing. - Algorithms are designed to minimize the number of compares which can be expensive. - Natural support for sets of sets. No special accomodation needs to be made to use a set or dict as a set member, but users need to be careful to not mutate a member of a set since that may breaks its sort invariant. Disadvantages:  -  Set construction uses list.sort() with potentially N log(N) comparisons. - Membership testing and element addition use log(N) comparisons. Element addition uses list.insert() with takes O(N) time.

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	Windows, Mac, *nix, Mac OSX, Linux, Python , BSD Solaris
Keyword:	Algorithm,  List Manipulation,  Lists,  Sets Algorithm,  Sorted,  Sorted Lists
Users rating:	0/10