[Python-ideas] How assignment should work with generators?

[C Anthony Risinger]

On Nov 28, 2017 12:32 AM, "Steven D'Aprano" <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 06:15:47PM +1300, Greg Ewing wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> >How does "stop iterating here" equate to a wildcard?
>
> The * means "I don't care what else the sequence has in it".
>
> Because I don't care, there's no need to iterate any further.

I'll grant you that. But I don't see how that relates to being a
wildcard. I'm not seeing the connection. I mean, you wouldn't interpret

   from module import *

to mean "I don't care what's in the module, so don't bother importing
anything" would you? So the concept of wildcard here seems to be the
opposite to its use here:

- in imports, it means "import everything the module offers";
- in extended iterable unpacking, it means "collect everything";

both of which (to me) seem related to the concept of a wildcard; but in
this proposed syntax, we have

   x, y, * = iterable

which means the opposite to "collect everything", instead meaning
"collect nothing and stop".

Anyway, given that * = is visually ambiguous with *= I don't think this
syntax is feasible (even though * = is currently a syntax error, or at
least it is in 3.5).


If not already considered, what if the RHS had to be explicitly unpacked?

Something like:

a, b, c = *iterator

Which would essentially be:

a, b, c = (*iterator,)

This enables lazy assignment by default but `*` can force complete
expansion (and exact matching) of the RHS.

It's a breaking change, but it does have a straightforward fix (simply wrap
and unpack any relevant RHS).

Thanks,

-- 

C Anthony
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