[Python-Dev] Retrieve an arbitrary element from a set without removing it

[Terry Reedy]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Next(s) would seem good...

That does not work. It has to be next(iter(s)), and that has been tried 
and eliminated because it is significantly slower.

>> Interesting. It depends a bit on the speed of tuple unpacking, but
>> presumably that is quite fast. On my system it is pretty darn good:
>>
>> 0.101us "for x in s: break"
>> 0.112us "x, = s"