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()

Answer 1

What I usually do for small collections is to create kind of parser/converter method like this

def convertSetToList(setName):
return list(setName)

Then I can use the new list and access by index number

userFields = convertSetToList(user)
name = request.json[userFields[0]]

As a list you will have all the other methods that you may need to work with

Answer 2

How about s.copy().pop()? I haven't timed it, but it should work and it's simple. It works best for small sets however, as it copies the whole set.