Force.com Apex Code Developer's Guide

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Sets

A set is an unordered collection of elements that do not contain any duplicates. Set elements can be of any data type—primitive types, collections, sObjects, user-defined types, and built-in Apex types. For example, the following table represents a set of strings, that uses city names:

'San Francisco' 'New York' 'Paris' 'Tokyo'

Sets can contain collections that can be nested within one another. For example, you can have a set of lists of sets of Integers. A set can contain up to four levels of nested collections inside it, that is, up to five levels overall.

To declare a set, use the Set keyword followed by the primitive data type name within <> characters. For example:

The following are ways to declare and populate a set:

To access elements in a set, use the system methods provided by Apex. For example:

For more information, including a complete list of all supported set system methods, see Set Class.

Note the following limitations on sets:
  • Unlike Java, Apex developers do not need to reference the algorithm that is used to implement a set in their declarations (for example, HashSet or TreeSet). Apex uses a hash structure for all sets.
  • A set is an unordered collection. Do not rely on the order in which set results are returned. The order of objects returned by sets may change without warning.