how to find all the subsets of a given set

general
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1

here is the solution can someone explain what is being done in lower_bound and upper_bound lines in the code
2

If you want to know how to calculate all the subsets of a given set you can refer to this link. Hope this helps.

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3

@flappy what is the use of lower_bound and upper_bound in solution

4

The lower and upper bound of a binary search are the lowest and highest position where the value could be inserted without breaking the ordering. (In the C++ standard library, these bounds will be represented by iterators referencing the element before which the value could be inserted, but the concept is not essentially changed.)

Take, for example, a sorted range

1 2 3 4 5 5 5 6 7 9

In a binary search for 3, we will have

   v-- lower bound
1 2 3 4 5 5 5 6 7 9
     ^-- upper bound

And in a binary search for 5:

       v-- lower bound
1 2 3 4 5 5 5 6 7 9
             ^-- upper bound

The lower and upper bound are the same if the element does not exist in the range. In a binary search for 8:

                 v-- lower bound
1 2 3 4 5 5 5 6 7 9
                 ^-- upper bound

The author of the article to which you refer phrases all this in the equivalent terms of “smaller than” and “greater than” so that in a search of 5,

       v-- lower bound
t t t t f f f f f f      <-- smaller than?
1 2 3 4 5 5 5 6 7 9
f f f f f f f t t t      <-- greater than?
             ^-- upper bound

The C++ iterators will, in all these cases, refer to the element directly behind the bound. That is to say:

  • In the search for 3, the iterator returned by std::lower_bound would refer to 3 and the one from std::upper_bound would refer to 4
  • In the search for 5, the iterator returned by std::lower_bound would refer to the first 5 and the one from std::upper_bound would refer to 6
  • In the search for 8, both would refer to 9

This is because the convention in the C++ standard library for insertions is to pass an iterator referring to the element before which the new element should be inserted. For example, after

std::vector<int> vec { 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9 };
vec.insert(vec.begin() + 1, 2);

vec would contain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9. std::lower_bound and std::upper_bound follow this convention so that

vec.insert(std::lower_bound(vec.begin(), vec.end(), 5), 5);
vec.insert(std::upper_bound(vec.begin(), vec.end(), 8), 8);

work as desired and leave vec sorted.

More generally, this is an expression of the way ranges are specified in the C++ standard library. The beginning iterator of a range refers to the first element of the range (if any), while the ending iterator refers to the element (if any) directly behind the end of the range. Another way to look at it is that the iterators returned by std::lower_bound and std::upper_bound span the range of elements in the searched range that are equivalent to the searched element.

This range is empty if the element is not in the range, so that lower_bound and upper_bound return the same iterator, and otherwise lower_bound returns an iterator referring to the first element in the searched range that’s equivalent to the search value while upper_bound returns an iterator referring to the element (if any) that’s directly behind the last such element.

PS: Answer copied from StackOverflow
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28389065/difference-between-basic-binary-search-for-upper-bound-and-lower-bound