I think this is important enough to get a change in subject line, lest it be lost in the dict unpacking thread. On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 11:28:25PM +0100, Nathan Schneider wrote:
Instead of special syntax, what if dict.values() returned a tuple when given keys as arguments:
partner_id, product_id, ship_to, product_ids = my_dict.values( 'partner_id', 'product_id', 'ship_to', 'product_ids')
That avoids repeating the dict variable, at least. And as there is dict.update(), I don't see the need for a new syntax for assigning to multiple keys.
I like this idea. I think it beats the status quo: partner_id = my_dict['partner_id'] product_id = my_dict['product_id'] # etc. and the various "dict unpacking" syntax suggested, e.g.: {'partner_id': partner_id, 'product_id': product_id, **catch_all} = my_dict and it's less magical than variants that extract the names from the left hand side: partner_id, product_id, ship_to, product_ids = **my_dict It naturally and trivially supports the case where assignment targets aren't names, and where keys are not identifiers: obj.partner_id, products[the_id] = my_dict.values('partner id', 'is') It's still a bit repetitive in the simple case where the keys are the same as the variable names, but without compiler magic, what else are you going to do? +1 -- Steve