Best way to split up lines - RE: About the 79 character linerecommendation

[Roy Smith]

In article <1165519627.247663.165610 at 73g2000cwn.googlegroups.com>,
 "John Machin" <sjmachin at lexicon.net> wrote:

> Roy Smith wrote:
> 
> > It would be nice if struct.unpack() had a way to specify unpacking repeated
> > items as a list, ie:
> >
> >    data = struct.unpack ("! H 4(B) H 2B 12(B) 6(B) H I", strMessage)
> >    (top,
> >     ip,
> >     messageCounter,
> >     ackRequired,
> >     dataType,
> >     utc,
> >     st,
> >     numberOfLables,
> >     dataWord) = data
> >
> > and you'd end up with ip, utc, and st being lists.
> 
> :-)
> Extension: if you used [] in the format string, the results would be
> tuples.
> :-)

I see your point.  Actually, I think you want to force the sequences to be 
lists (regardless of what syntax we end up with), on the theory that tuples 
are for heterogeneous sequences and lists are for homogeneous ones.  As for 
the parens, I was thinking fortran-style format specifiers, which may or 
may not be the best model for a modern language :-)

> >  Hmmm, maybe that's
> > worth a PEP?
> 
> Great minds think more-or-less alike :-)

I was in the process of writing one up when I saw your earlier post.  I'll 
mail you a draft when I've got it done.