M.-A. Lemburg:
Shouldn't be hard to do... the C API for this is already in place: PyDict_Next(). I'd prefer a method .getitem(), though, which then returns a tuple (key, value).
IMO '.pickitem()' would be a better name, since many people would think, that 'getitem()' would take some kind of index as parameter. Nevertheless I think this is a nice idea, though.
Pronouncement: It is only efficient to get the *first* item, so let's make that explicit. The method names will be: .firstkey() .firstvalue() .firstitem() Moshe will check in a patch. Thinking aloud: Would it be useful to also implement popkey(), popvalue(), popitem(), which would remove the first item and then return the relevant part of it? --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)