# Disjoint-set data structure in Python 3

Inspired by this question, I decided to implement a Disjoint-set data structure in Python 3. I mainly followed this description for understanding the algorithm (but did not do the optimizations for path compression, union by rank etc. -- so mine is a "naive" implementation). Here is the Wikipedia article for reference.

In short, the data structure can hold n disjoint sets, and do two operations on them:

• merge any two sets into a single one
• for any element, tell to which set it belongs

My implementation is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/python

class Disjoint:

def __init__(self):
self.sets = []

def createSet(self, repr):
self.sets.append([repr])

def mergeSets(self, repr1, repr2):
set1 = self.findSet(repr1);
set2 = self.findSet(repr2);
if set1 != set2:
set1.extend(set2);
self.sets.remove(set2);

def findSet(self, repr1):
for oneSet in self.sets:
if repr1 in oneSet:
return oneSet

def getSets(self):
return self.sets;


The test class:

import unittest
import disjoint

class TestSequenceFunctions(unittest.TestCase):

def setUp(self):
pass;

def test_empty(self):
dis = disjoint.Disjoint();
self.assertEqual([], dis.getSets())
self.assertEqual(None, dis.findSet(1))

def test_init(self):
dis = disjoint.Disjoint();
for i in range(1, 6):
dis.createSet(i);
for i in range(1, 6):
found = dis.findSet(i);
self.assertEqual(1, len(found))
self.assertEqual(i, found[0])
expected = [[i] for i in range(1, 6)]
self.assertEqual(expected, dis.getSets())

def test_simple(self):
dis = disjoint.Disjoint();
for i in range(1, 6):
dis.createSet(i);
pairs = [[1, 2], [2, 4], [4, 5]]
for p in pairs:
p1 = p[0];
p2 = p[1];

if dis.findSet(p1) != dis.findSet(p2):
dis.mergeSets(p1, p2);

expetctedSets = [[1, 2, 4, 5], [3]];
self.assertEqual(expetctedSets, dis.getSets())

if __name__ == '__main__':
unittest.main()


Any suggestion for improvement is welcome, but in particular, I'm interested in the following:

• Do you see any problem in the (naive) implementation of the algorithm?
• Can the code be improved in any way to have similar functionality, but either be more elegant or more efficient in Python? (I'm thinking of things like using list comprehensions instead of for-itertions, etc.)
• Is there any other test case that would be worth adding?

N.B.: For now, I'm not interested in how to implement the optimizations suggested in the linked source (that will be the next step, also using any new unit tests suggested here).

• I have a self-contained and reusable implementation in this gist: disjoint_set.py, which is pretty much a Python 3 port of the Java implementation from the Princeton algo course. It has both rank heuristics and path compression, so the running time for union and find operations is approximately log*(n). It doesn't use a makeset() function; all sets are defined at initialization, which for intents and purposes is what I need. – bruceoutdoors Sep 1 '17 at 0:24

There's a couple of points that are a possible C or Java background leaking through:

• You end a lot of lines with an unnecessarry semicolon
• You've named your methods and some variables using camelCase, whereas the prefered convention in Python is usually lowercase_with_underscores (the unittest module is an anomaly here, being one of a very few isolated stdlib modules using camelCase)
• The getSets method is unnecessarry. Python convention is to expose attributes directly because if the implementation changes later, you can just make it a property. If you really don't want to do that, then you should rename self.sets to self._sets to emphasise that it isn't part of the documented API

I have a feeling that the following line:

self.sets.append([repr])


isn't actually doing what you want. It looks like you mean self.sets.append(repr), otherwise self.sets is full of single-length lists whose only item is a collection of some kind whereas it would make more sense for those collections to be in self.sets directly. You would then make a corresponding change down in findSet so that the test there reads:

if repr1 == oneSet:


Also think about what should happen if findSet fails to find the set. As written, it will fall off the end and impliiclty return None, which will almost certaintly lead to errors in short order. Instead, you should probably immediately raise ValueError with an appropriate error message. You may also want to use list.find to help with this.

repr is the name of a builtin function, so calling your arguments by that name shadows it. A better name might be subset, for example. You may also want to document whether it should be a set, a list or a tuple, especially if that ends up mattering to any of the optimisations you write later.

In test_simple, this looks like a typo:

expetctedSets = [[1, 2, 4, 5], [3]];


should be 'expected'.

Finally, you say that this class models disjoint sets, but you never enforce that. Indeed, this would work:

ds = Disjoint()
subset = {1,2,3}

• Many thanks for your helpful comments. One remark though: self.sets.append([repr]) is intended: in the beginning I want to have lists consisting of single elements, which then grow, as I join the subsets (via mergeSets). But all the other suggestions are great, and I'll try to improve the code accordingly. (Btw., you correctly guessed that I have C++ and Java background :) ) – Attilio Feb 1 '15 at 13:11