change of random state when pyc created??

[Alan Isaac]

"Carsten Haese" <carsten at uniqsys.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.7498.1178763619.32031.python-list at python.org...
> Knowing that maps don't have reproducible ordering is one thing.
> Realizing that that's the cause of the problem that's arbitrarily and
> wrongly attributed to the 'random' module, in a piece of code that's not
> posted to the public, and presumably not trimmed down to the shortest
> possible example of the problem, is quite another.

There is no reason to be unfriendly about this.
I posted an observation about my code behavior
and my best understanding of it.  I asked for an
explanation and did not assert a bug, although when
someone doubted that the presence or absence of the
.pyc file mattered for the results I said that *if* it should
not matter *then* there was a bug.  I offered the code
to all that asked for it.  I did not post it **because**
I had not adequately isolated the problem.  (But indeed,
I was not isolating the problem due to misconceptions.)

> I'll venture the guess that most Python programmers with a modicum of
> experience will, when asked point blank if it's safe to rely on a
> dictionary to be iterated in a particular order, answer no.

Again, that misses the point.  This is clearly documented.
I would have said the same thing: no, that's not safe. But
the question is whether the same people will be surprised when
*unchanged* code rerun with an *unchanged* implementation
produces *changed* results.  I do not see how a reader of
this thread cannot conclude that yes, even some sophisticated
users (who received my code) will be surprised.  The docs
should not be useful only to the most sophisticated users.

> It does, at least for dicts: "Keys and values are listed in an arbitrary
> order." If this wording is not present for sets, something to this
> effect should be added.

Even Robert did not claim that *that* phrase was adequate.
I note that you cut off "which is non-random"!

Alan Isaac