Chapter 10. Set Theory in GEL

Table of Contents

Using Sets

Genius has some basic set theoretic functionality built in. Currently a set is just a vector (or a matrix). Every distinct object is treated as a different element.

Using Sets

Just like vectors, objects in sets can include numbers, strings, null, matrices and vectors. It is planned in the future to have a dedicated type for sets, rather than using vectors. Note that floating point numbers are distinct from integers, even if they appear the same. That is, Genius will treat 0 and 0.0 as two distinct elements. The null is treated as an empty set.

To build a set out of a vector, use the MakeSet function. Currently, it will just return a new vector where every element is unique.

genius> MakeSet([1,2,2,3])
= [1, 2, 3]

Similarly there are functions Union, Intersection, SetMinus, which are rather self explanatory. For example:

genius> Union([1,2,3], [1,2,4])
= [1, 2, 4, 3]

Note that no order is guaranteed for the return values. If you wish to sort the vector you should use the SortVector function.

For testing membership, there are functions IsIn and IsSubset, which return a boolean value. For example:

genius> IsIn (1, [0,1,2])
= true

The input IsIn(x,X) is equivalent to IsSubset([x],X). Note that since the empty set is a subset of every set, IsSubset(null,X) is always true.