Union Operation For std::set [duplicate]

Answer 1

There's std::set_union.

The example from that page uses vectors and arrays, so it's pretty versatile:

// set_union example
#include <iostream>     // std::cout
#include <algorithm>    // std::set_union, std::sort
#include <vector>       // std::vector

int main () {
  int first[] = {5,10,15,20,25};
  int second[] = {50,40,30,20,10};
  std::vector<int> v(10);                      // 0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
  std::vector<int>::iterator it;

  std::sort (first,first+5);     //  5 10 15 20 25
  std::sort (second,second+5);   // 10 20 30 40 50

  it=std::set_union (first, first+5, second, second+5, v.begin());
                                               // 5 10 15 20 25 30 40 50  0  0
  v.resize(it-v.begin());                      // 5 10 15 20 25 30 40 50

  std::cout << "The union has " << (v.size()) << " elements:\n";
  for (it=v.begin(); it!=v.end(); ++it)
    std::cout << ' ' << *it;
  std::cout << '\n';

  return 0;
}

Output:

The union has 8 elements:
 5 10 15 20 25 30 40 50

Answer 2

You can use the two-iterator std::set::insert template for this:

template <typename T>
std::set<T> getUnion(const std::set<T>& a, const std::set<T>& b)
{
  std::set<T> result = a;
  result.insert(b.begin(), b.end());
  return result;
}

---

Note: Following some of the comments suggesting I take one of the parameters by value because I need a copy anyway, I chose this implementation to avoid disallowing RVO, which is not allowed when returning parameter taken by value. To better deal with rvalue arguments, overloads of this function taking rvalue reverences and leveraging move semantics could be provided.