Why would anyone use set instead of unordered_set?

Use set when:

1. We need ordered data(distinct elements).
2. We would have to print/access the data (in sorted order).
3. We need predecessor/successor of elements.

Use unordered_set when:

1. We need to keep a set of distinct elements and no ordering is required.
2. We need single element access i.e. no traversal.

Examples:

set:

Input : 1, 8, 2, 5, 3, 9

Output : 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9

Unordered_set:

Input : 1, 8, 2, 5, 3, 9

Output : 9 3 1 8 2 5 (maybe this order, influenced by hash function)

Mainly difference :

Note:(in some case set is more convenient) for example using vector as key

set<vector<int>> s;
s.insert({1, 2});
s.insert({1, 3});
s.insert({1, 2});

for(const auto& vec:s)
    cout<<vec<<endl;   // I have override << for vector
// 1 2
// 1 3 

The reason why vector<int> can be as key in set because vector override operator<.

But if you use unordered_set<vector<int>> you have to create a hash function for vector<int>, because vector does't have a hash function, so you have to define one like:

struct VectorHash {
    size_t operator()(const std::vector<int>& v) const {
        std::hash<int> hasher;
        size_t seed = 0;
        for (int i : v) {
            seed ^= hasher(i) + 0x9e3779b9 + (seed<<6) + (seed>>2);
        }
        return seed;
    }
};

vector<vector<int>> two(){
    //unordered_set<vector<int>> s; // error vector<int> doesn't  have hash function
    unordered_set<vector<int>, VectorHash> s;
    s.insert({1, 2});
    s.insert({1, 3});
    s.insert({1, 2});

    for(const auto& vec:s)
        cout<<vec<<endl;
    // 1 2
    // 1 3
}

you can see that in some case unordered_set is more complicated.

Mainly cited from: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/set-vs-unordered_set-c-stl/ https://stackoverflow.com/a/29855973/6329006

g++ 6.4 stdlibc++ ordered vs unordered set benchmark

I benchmarked this dominant Linux C++ implementation to see the difference:

The full benchmark details and analysis have been given at: What is the underlying data structure of a STL set in C++? and I will not repeat them here.

"BST" means "tested with std::set and "hash map" means "tested with std::unordered_set. "Heap" is for std::priority_queue which I analyzed at: Heap vs Binary Search Tree (BST)

As a quick summary:

• the graph clearly shows that under these conditions, hashmap insertion were always a lot faster when there are more than 100k items, and the difference grows as the number of items increases

  The cost of this speed boost is that you are not able to efficiently traverse in order.

• the curves clearly suggest that ordered std::set is BST-based and std::unordered_set is hashmap based. In the reference answer, I further confirmed that by GDB step debugging the code.

Similar question for map vs unordered_map: Is there any advantage of using map over unordered_map in case of trivial keys?

While this answer might be 10 years late, it's worth pointing out that std::unordered_set also has security downsides.

If the hash function is predictable (this is typically the case unless it applies counter-measures such as a randomized salt), attackers can hand-craft data that produces hash collisions and causes all insertions and look-ups to take O(n) time.

This can be used for very efficient and elegant denial-of-service attacks.

Many (most?) implementations of languages that internally employ hash maps have run into this:

• Javascript
• PHP
• Java

Here's a practical reason that I haven't seen listed... if used incorrectly in buggy code, unordered sets can cause code to behave differently on different machines. This is because the order that the values are stored is not consistent across machines.

If code is (incorrectly) written that relies on the order of storage, the result will be that the program behaves inconsistently between different machines. Practically, this could happen if the unordered set is part of the implementation of a function/method that returns a list of values. The client of that function may not realize that an unordered set is being used, and may not realize that the order of the returned list is not guaranteed to be consistent/portable.

Thus, unordered sets are a bit more unforgiving to the programmer than ordered sets. They introduce this additional mechanism for confusing code behavior, which can lead to time consuming/confusing bugs because they may not be reproducible between machines.