"Raymond Hettinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Another way to put it is that the docs are sufficient > when they say that set ordering is arbitrary. That should be a cue to > not have *any* expectations about the internal ordering of sets and > dicts.
You are usually more careful. 1. Please do not conflate two issues here. It confuses people like Richard T. Did *anyone* who participated in the initial conversation express an expectation that set ordering is not arbitrary? No. Not one. What surprised people was that this ordering could vary between two *sequential* executions of an *unchanged* source. Martin dismisses this by simply asserting (on what basis?) that anyone who was surprised lacks Python experience, and that to address this in any way would make the reference library assume the role of a tutorial. Not very plausible, IMO, given the rest of the library documentation. 2. You say it the existing docs "should be a cue", and yet they clearly did not provide enough guidance to an ordinary user (me) and some more sophisticated users. So the docs "should be a cue" to people who do not need a cue. Do I understand you correctly? 3. Finally, please do not claim that the docs say that set ordering is arbitrary. At least not the docs we have benn talking about: http://docs.python.org/lib/types-set.html It is fascinating that you would confuse this, since it is the core of the proposed documentation patch (although the proposed language was "indeterminate" rather than arbitrary). So it also seems you are now claiming that the patch should not be in because of the presence of language that is in fact not there. Look, I was just trying to help other users who might be as surprised as I was. As I said, I am not attached to any language, and in fact I just used the proposals of others. I just wanted there to be some clue for users who read the docs. If you prefer to leave such users baffled, so be it. My effort is exhausted. Cheers, Alan Isaac -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
