In mathematical notation, symmetric difference is defined as:
And using Venn diagram:
symmetricDifference() accepts set-like objects as the other parameter. It requires this to be an actual Set instance, because it directly retrieves the underlying data stored in this without invoking any user code. Then, it iterates over other by calling its keys() method, and constructs a new set with all elements in this that are not seen in other, and all elements in other that are not seen in this.
The order of elements in the returned set is first those in this followed by those in other.