Partitive set families are families of sets that can be quite large, but have a compact, recursive representation in the form of a tree. This tree is a common generalization of PQ trees, the modular decomposition of graphs, certain decompositions of boolean functions, and decompositions that arise on a variety of other combinatorial structures. We describe natural operators on partitive set families, give algebraic identities for manipulating them, and describe efficient algorithms for evaluating them. We use these results to obtain new time bounds for finding the common intervals of a set of permutations, finding the modular decomposition of an edge-colored graph (also known as a two-structure), finding the PQ tree of a matrix when a consecutive-ones arrangement is given, and finding the modular decomposition of a permutation graph when its permutation realizer is given.
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