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Thanks for your response. I think now the differences and similarities
between Set, Hash and Array are clear to me. But with respect to memory
consumption which one of among the following is better:

s  et.new([1,2,3])
h   1il, 2il, 3nil}


On 2/17/07, Peter Szinek <peter / rubyrailways.com> wrote:
>
> SunRaySon wrote:
> > Are there any general guidelines on when a "Set" should be used and when
> a
> > "Hash" should be used. Are there any limitations to "Set"
>
> A Set is similar to an Array - the two major differences are that a Set
> is unordered (because it's implementation is based on a Hash) and that a
> Set contains every element only once (i.e. if you add an element which
> is already there, the Set won't change).
>
> You should use a Hash if you have a dictionary-like structure (i.e. key
> value pairs) and a Set/Array if you have single objects. You can
> think about a Set as a Hash where every value is nil - i.e. you can
> represent a Set with a Hash but it makes no sense if you are not using
> any values at all. In this case you should use a Set.
>
> I hope this answers your question...
>
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> __
> http://www.rubyrailways.com :: Ruby and Web2.0 blog
> http://scrubyt.org :: Ruby web scraping framework
> http://rubykitchensink.ca/ :: The indexed archive of all things Ruby
>
>
>

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