This is an attempt to synthesize Bill and Carsten's proposals. (I'm changing the subject line to better match the topic.)
http://docs.python.org/lib/typesmapping.html: for footnote (3) Keys and values are listed in an arbitrary order. This order is indeterminate and generally depends on factors outside the scope of the containing program. However, if items(), keys(), values(), iteritems(), iterkeys(), and itervalues() are called with no intervening modifications to the dictionary, the lists will directly correspond. http://docs.python.org/lib/types-set.html: append a new sentence to 2nd par. Iteration over a set returns elements in an indeterminate order,which generally depends on factors outside the scope of the containing program. Alan Isaac -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
