[Python-Dev] Retrieve an arbitrary element from a setwithoutremoving it

[Nick Coghlan]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> So you want to introduce additional, hidden state to sets? (to make
>> sure that successive invocations return different values)
> 
> If you can think of any other way to efficiently cycle over the elements 
> in a set, I'm all for it :)

for x in itertools.cycle(s):
  # this is an infinite loop

Having a pick() or get() method that returns an arbitrary member of a
set makes sense to me. Having any state on the set that guarantees
successive calls to get will return different values feels wrong -
creating an object with that extra state is what iter(s) is for.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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