Possible solution:
s = {} # new empty set
d = {:} # new empty dictionary (the ":" is a reference to key-value pairs)
I have suggested over the years—as have probably dozens of other people (maybe thousands)—that that would be a great spelling if Python were a brand new language. But in reality, Python is 30+ years old, and billions of lines of code use `{}` as an empty dict.
Historically, Python had dictionaries before it had sets, so there was more than a decade in there where sets were not a thing you could spell at all. A breaking change isn't something that's going to happen here.
--
Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food
from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the
uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting
advocates of freedom in prisons. Intellectual property is
to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.