Use curly braces to initialize a Set in Python

I'm learning python, and I have a novice question about initializing sets. Through testing, I've discovered that a set can be initialized like so:

my_set = {'foo', 'bar', 'baz'}

Are there any disadvantages of doing it this way, as opposed to the standard way of:

my_set = set(['foo', 'bar', 'baz'])

or is it just a question of style?

Solution 1:

There are two obvious issues with the set literal syntax:

my_set = {'foo', 'bar', 'baz'}

1. It's not available before Python 2.7

2. There's no way to express an empty set using that syntax (using {} creates an empty dict)

Those may or may not be important to you.

The section of the docs outlining this syntax is here.

Solution 2:

Compare also the difference between {} and set() with a single word argument.

>>> a = set('aardvark')
>>> a
{'d', 'v', 'a', 'r', 'k'} 
>>> b = {'aardvark'}
>>> b
{'aardvark'}

but both a and b are sets of course.