So there would be a discontinuity - list('foo') would have to be ['f',
'o', 'o'] for backward compatibility. And that makes list(*args)
problematic, as it behaves differently if len(args)==1.
max() and min() do behave like this - they accept either a single iterable, or *args - so it's not unprecedented. But I don't see any benefit to adding it to the list() constructor.