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From: Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Mathematics, Java, good enough
Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 10:58:44 -0400
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On 5/17/2016 10:29 AM, FredK wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 17, 2016 at 7:17:23 AM UTC-7, FredK wrote:
>> The question arises whether you really want to know how many distinguishable strinmgs there are, which is much smaller if the original set contains duplicate entries.
> For example, if the set it "AAB" there are only 3 distinguishable strings of length 2: AA, AB, and BA

     What happened to "BB"?  I think you're writing about a
situation that doesn't match the O.P.'s question.

     The O.P. wrote that he had a "set of characters," and went
on to mention its "cardinality" -- from this, I understood him
to mean that he actually had a "set."  {A A B} is not a set.
(It's a multiset, yes, but not a set.)

	import java.util.HashSet;
	public class TryMe {
	    public static void main(String[] unused) {
	        HashSet<Character> set = new HashSet<>();
	        set.add('A');
	        set.add('A');
	        set.add('B');
	        System.out.println(set.size());
	    }
	}

If the output is "3", your Java is broken.  ;)

-- 
esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid
"Don't be afraid of work. Make work afraid of you." -- TLM