On Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 12:48:36PM +1300, Greg Ewing wrote:
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Are you now supporting my argument that starring the list comprehension expression isn't meaningful?
The context it's in (a form of list display) has a clear meaning for a comma-separated list of values, so there is a reasonable interpretation that it *could* be given.
This thread is a huge, multi-day proof that people do not agree that this is a "reasonable" interpretation.
py> iterable = [(1, 'a'), (2, 'b')] py> [(100, *t) for t in iterable] [(100, 1, 'a'), (100, 2, 'b')]
The * there is in the context of constructing a tuple, not the list into which the tuple is placed.
Right: the context of the star is meaningful. We all agree that *t in a list display [a, b, c, ...] is meaningful; same for tuples; same for function calls; same for sequence unpacking for assignment. What is not meaningful (except as a Perlish line-noise special case to be memorised) is *t as the list comprehension expression. I've never disputed that we could *assert* that *t in a list comp means "flatten". We could assert that it means anything we like. But it doesn't follow from the usual meaning of sequence unpacking anywhere else -- that's why it is currently a SyntaxError, and that's why people reacted with surprise at the OP who assumed that *t would magically flatten his iterable. Why would you assume that? It makes no sense to me -- that's not how sequence unpacking works in any other context, it isn't how list comprehensions work. Right from the beginning I called this "wishful thinking", and *nothing* since then has changed my mind. This proposal only makes even a little bit of sense if you imagine list comprehensions [*t for a in it1 for b in it2 for c in it3 ... for t in itN] completely unrolled into a list display: [*t, *t, *t, *t, ... ] but who does that? Why would you reason about your list comps like that? If you think about list comps as we're expected to think of them -- as list builders equivalent to a for-loop -- the use of *t there is invalid. Hence it is a SyntaxError. You want a second way to flatten your iterables? A cryptic, mysterious, Perlish line-noise way? Okay, fine, but don't pretend it is sequence unpacking -- in the context of a list comprehension, sequence unpacking doesn't make sense, it is invalid. Call it something else: the new "flatten" operator: [^t for t in iterable] for example, which magically adds an second invisible for-loop to your list comps: # expands to for t in iterable: for x in t: result.append(x) Because as your own email inadvertently reinforces, if sequence unpacking made sense in the context of a list comprehension, it would already be allowed rather than a SyntaxError: it is intentionally prohibited because it doesn't make sense in the context of list comps. -- Steve