Re: [Python-Dev] Retrieve an arbitrary element from a set withoutremoving it

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 10:10:30 am Guido van Rossum wrote:

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Steven D'Aprano steve@pearwood.info

wrote:

...

Since I was the person who decided that "arbitrary" meant "give a different result each time", I should answer that.

You're obviously talking about a *random* element. This is a separate use case (though I agree many people don't know the difference).

I'm aware of the difference between random and arbitrary, and in an earlier post I said that the One Obvious Way of getting a random element from a list would be to convert to a list and call random.choice(). Sorry for muddying the waters by linking to a page discussing such random selections.