How to get an item from a simple set?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Pete> I have a set that contains one item.  What is the best way of
    Pete> getting at that item?  Using pop() empties the set.  

Do you want to enumerate all the items in the set?  If so:

    for elt in s:
        print elt

If you just want to grab one arbitrary (though not random) item from the
set, try:

    elt = iter(s).next()

Note that repeating this operation will always return the same item:

    >>> s
    set(['jkl', 'foo', 'abc', 'def', 'ghi'])
    >>> iter(s).next()
    'jkl'
    >>> iter(s).next()
    'jkl'
    >>> iter(s).next()
    'jkl'
    >>> iter(s).next()
    'jkl'

Skip