Associative Set Operations

This README describes some initial support for set operations on associative arrays and domains. It is expected that the features described here will be included in a future version of the language specification.

Associative Domain Set Operations

The following set functions/operations are supported by associative domains. In the following code examples, A, B, and C are associative domains. For every operator, an op= variant exists. For these op= functions, LHS op= RHS, the LHS argument is modified in-place using the same rules as the normal operator function.

isSubset

proc isSubset(super : domain) : bool;

A.isSubset(B);

This statement will return true if A is a subset of B. A is a subset of B if every index in A is also present in B.

isSuper

proc isSuper(sub : domain) : bool;

A.isSuper(B);

This statement will return true if B is a subset of A.

Union

C = A + B;
C = A | B;

C will be a new associative domain which contains every index in A and every index in B.

The op= variants are:

A |= B;
A += B;

Difference

C = A - B;

C will contain the indices in A that are not also in B.

The op= variant is:

A -= B;

Any indices in both A and B will be removed from A.

Intersection

C = A & B;

C will contain the indices in A that are also in B.

The op= variant is:

A &= B;

Symmetric Difference

C = A ^ B;

C will contain the indices that are unique to A and unique to B. Another way of writing this statement is:

C = (A + B) - (A & B)

The op= variant is:

A ^= B;

Associative Array Set Operations

The Union, Difference, Intersection, and Symmetric Difference operators (and their op= variants) are available for associative arrays that don’t share their domains. This restriction exists because it may be surprising to appear to be modifying one array, and in turn modify another due to a shared domain.

When performing a set operation between two associative arrays, the resulting array’s domain is the result of the rules described in the previous section. Unless otherwise stated, the values from the LHS of the operation are used as the new array’s values.

Value Precedence for the Union Operator

In the following code snippet, let A and B be associative arrays whose domains contain some of the same indices:

C = A + B;

In the resulting array C, the values from B will take precedence when indices overlap.