What is the main difference between sets and other data structures? Only sets are immutable. Only sets are mutable. Only sets can’t contain repeated elements. Only sets are indexed beginning at zero.

1 answer

The main difference between sets and other data structures lies in the fact that only sets can’t contain repeated elements.

To elaborate on the provided options:

  1. Only sets are immutable: This is not true; sets can be mutable (like Python's set), and there are immutable versions of sets (like Python's frozenset).
  2. Only sets are mutable: This is also not true; many other data structures like lists, dictionaries, and arrays are mutable too.
  3. Only sets can’t contain repeated elements: This is the correct statement. Sets inherently do not allow duplicates.
  4. Only sets are indexed beginning at zero: This is false; sets are unordered collections and do not support indexing like lists or arrays.

Thus, the distinguishing feature of sets is their properties regarding uniqueness of elements.