ABSTRACT
Sets are a fundamental concept in computer science: the study of algorithms and data structures for maintaining them were among the earliest developments in data structures. Our focus will be on problems that involve maintaining a family F of sets, where all sets are drawn from a universe U of elements. We do not assume that there is a particular natural order among the elements of U , and in particular do not focus on data structuring problems on sets where the operations explicitly assume such an order (e.g. priority queues). A base repertoire of actions is as follows:
create() Create a new empty set, add it to F and return the name of the set.
