How to retrieve an element from a set without removing it?

Question

Suppose the following:

>>> s = set([1, 2, 3])

How do I get a value (any value) out of s without doing s.pop()? I want to leave the item in the set until I am sure I can remove it - something I can only be sure of after an asynchronous call to another host.

Quick and dirty:

>>> elem = s.pop()

>>> s.add(elem)

But do you know of a better way? Ideally in constant time.

Answer 1

If you want to retrieve an element from a set without removing it the below-mentioned way is perfect to use. This would create a new list which contains each member of the set.

s = set([1, 2, 3])

list(s)[0]