Question

I want to implement a Set in C.
Is it OK to use a linked list, when creating the SET, or should I use another approach ?

How do you usually implement your own set (if needed).

NOTE:
If I use the Linked List approach, I will probably have the following complexities for Set my operations:

• init : O(1);
• destroy: O(n);
• insert: O(n);
• remove: O(n);
• union: O(n*m);
• intersection: O(n*m);
• difference: O(n*m);
• ismember: O(n);
• issubset: O(n*m);
• setisequal: O(n*m);

O(n*m) seems may be a little to big especially for huge data… Is there a way to implement my Set more efficient ?

Answer 1

I have used Red-Black trees in the past to build sets.

Here are the time complexities from the Wikipedia article.

Space O(n)
Search O(log n)
Insert O(log n)
Delete O(log n)