Sets in Ruby

A Comprehensive Guide

Ruby, a dynamic, open-source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity, offers various data structures to make developers’ lives easier. One such under-appreciated part of Ruby is the Set. Unlike arrays, sets are collections of unordered, unique elements, providing an efficient way to handle data where the uniqueness of elements is a priority. This article explores the ins and outs of using sets in Ruby, from the basics to more advanced applications, shedding light on why and how to integrate sets into your Ruby programming toolkit.

Introduction to Sets

A Set is a collection of unordered values with no duplicates. It is similar to an Array, but with two key differences: the elements are unordered, and each element appears only once. This makes sets ideal for operations such as membership checks, union, intersection, and difference.

Ruby’s Set class is part of the standard library but requires an explicit require 'set' statement to use, as it is not loaded by default. Once required, you can create sets and use them in your Ruby applications.

Creating and Initializing Sets

To start using sets, you first need to require the Set class: