>
If you can get by with a single literal list of words, write it once.
> ...if it's long enough to be annoying or becomes a maintenance burden, use the `split()` idiom.
> ...if that's considered a "hack" or "bad form", then run it in the shell once and copy/paste the result.
> ...if it might get mutated in a loop, copy it (words[:]). You'd be constructing a new one anyways.
> ...if it's just too long to maintain in code, just load it from a txt file once at runtime.
Well said, Brandt.
My personal preference is to run "...".split() in the shell and copy/paste the output, as it takes an incredibly minimal amount of time to start up the REPL for simple one liners. In my experience, folks often seem to forget that the REPL (or IDLE shell) exists outside of demo examples; it's highly useful for quick micro-scripts.
I'm not 100% opposed to the proposed functionality, but I'm against the syntax and don't consider the lack of a shortcut to be particularly detrimental in this case. IMO, anything that falls under the category of being a syntactical shortcut should be highly readable and fairly obvious as to what it's doing at a first glance. Otherwise, it adds an unnecessary cost to the learning curve of Python (which can very rapidly accumulate if it's not kept in check).