Dart Sets

Introduction to Dart Sets

In Dart, a set is an unordered collection of unique items. Sets are useful when you need to ensure that each element appears only once. The Dart Set class provides a convenient way to work with collections of distinct elements, leveraging generics to handle various data types.

Creating a Set in Dart

You can create a set in Dart using the Set class or by using a set literal. Sets can be initialized as empty or with a predefined list of elements.

In the example above, numbers is an empty set of integers, and fruits is a set initialized with some string elements.

Basic Operations on Sets

Dart sets provide several methods to perform common operations such as adding, removing, and checking for elements.

In this example, we add 'orange' to the fruits set, remove 'banana', and check if 'apple' is present.

Set Operations: Union, Intersection, and Difference

Sets in Dart support operations like union, intersection, and difference, which are useful for comparing sets.

In the code above, unionSet contains all elements from both setA and setB, intersectionSet contains elements present in both sets, and differenceSet contains elements that are in setA but not in setB.

Using Generics with Sets

Dart sets are generics, which means you can specify the type of elements a set can contain. This is particularly useful for type safety and ensuring consistent data types within your set.

Here, the prices set is defined to hold double values, while the flags set is for bool values, ensuring consistent data handling.

Conclusion

Dart sets offer a simple and efficient way to manage collections of unique items. Understanding how to leverage sets can greatly enhance the performance and clarity of your Dart applications, especially when dealing with data collections that require uniqueness.