[Python-3000] PEP 3132: Extended Iterable Unpacking

[Steven Bethard]

On 5/3/07, Simon Percivall <percivall at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2 maj 2007, at 20.08, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > [Georg]
> >>>>>>> a, *b, c = range(5)
> >>>>>>> a
> >>>>     0
> >>>>>>> c
> >>>>     4
> >>>>>>> b
> >>>>     [1, 2, 3]
> >
> > <snip>
> > That sounds messy; only allowing *a at the end seems a bit more
> > manageable. But I'll hold off until I can shoot holes in your
> > implementation. ;-)
>
> As the patch works right now, any iterator will be exhausted,
> but if the proposal is constrained to only allowing the *name at
> the end, wouldn't a more useful behavior be to not exhaust the
> iterator, making it similar to:
>
>  > it = iter(range(10))
>  > a = next(it)
>  > b = it
>
> or would this be too surprising?

In argument lists, *args exhausts iterators, converting them to
tuples. I think it would be confusing if *args in tuple unpacking
didn't do the same thing.

This brings up the question of why the patch produces lists, not
tuples. What's the reasoning behind that?

STeVe
-- 
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