In R, a vector may contain duplicated elements:
v = "A"
w = c("A", "A")
However, a set contains only one copy of each element. R treats a vector like a set by taking only its distinct elements, so the two vectors above are regarded as the same:
setequal(v, w)
# TRUE
The key functions have natural names:
x = c(1, 2, 3)
y = c(2, 4)
union(x, y)
# 1 2 3 4
intersect(x, y)
# 2
setdiff(x, y)
# 1 3
These are all documented on the same page, ?union
.