Question

NO SETS!

I can’t use Sets because:

• The ranges will be too long.
• They will take up too much memory
• The creation of the sets themselves will take too long.

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Using only the endpoints of the of the ranges, is there an optimal way to subtract two lists of ranges?

Example:

r1 = (1, 1000), (1100, 1200)  
r2 = (30, 50), (60, 200), (1150, 1300)

r1 - r2 = (1, 29), (51, 59), (201, 1000), (1100, 1149)

Other info:

• r2 does not have to overlap r1
• r1 and r2 will not have pairs that overlap other pairs. For instance, r1 will not have both (0,30) and (10, 25)

Thanks.

Answer 1

The interval package may provide all that you need.

from interval import Interval, IntervalSet
r1 = IntervalSet([Interval(1, 1000), Interval(1100, 1200)])
r2 = IntervalSet([Interval(30, 50), Interval(60, 200), Interval(1150, 1300)])
print(r1 - r2)

>>> [1..30),(50..60),(200..1000],[1100..1150)