How to add multiple strings to a set in Python?

Question

I am new to Python. When I added a string with add() function, it worked well. But when I tried to add multiple strings, it treated them as character items.

>>> set1 = {'a', 'bc'} >>> set1.add('de') >>> set1 set(['a', 'de', 'bc']) >>> set1.update('fg', 'hi') >>> set1 set(['a', 'g', 'f', 'i', 'h', 'de', 'bc']) >>> 

The results I wanted are set(['a', 'de', 'bc', 'fg', 'hi'])

Does this mean the update() function does not work for adding strings?

The version of Python used is: Python 2.7.1

Answer 1

update treats its arguments as sets. Thus supplied string 'fg' is implicitly converted to a set of 'f' and 'g'.