On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:47:59 am Raymond Hettinger wrote:
A dict.get() can be meaningfully used in a loop (because the key can vary). A set.get() returns the same value over and over again (because there is no key).
I don't believe anyone has requested those semantics. The suggested semantics for set.get() with no arguments, as I understand them, are: (1) it will only fail if the set is empty; (2) it should be efficient; (3) if you call it repeatedly on a set without modifying the set, you will cycle through each element in turn in some unspecified arbitrary order. To clarify point 3, given: x = set.get() y = set.get() then x and y will only be the same element if set has length one. However, given: x = set.get() set.add(el) set.remove(el) y = set.get() there are no guarantees about x and y being different. I believe that the patch supplied by Willi Richart implemented these behaviours. http://bugs.python.org/issue7212 -- Steven D'Aprano