multiple assignment

[Anand]

> You're right, that would not be so far off.
> But then, the following should be also supported:
>
> *x, y = a # x, y = a[:-1], y = a[-1]
> x, *y, z = a # x, y, z = a[0], a[1:-1], a[-1]
>
> Of course, there can be only one variable with an asterisk.
> (But note that in the situation of a function taking parameters, that
> variable must always be the last.)

Same argument can be applied for functions also. whats wrong in having
some thing like this?

def f(x, *y, z): pass

I think there is a problem in both these cases.

> But I don't know if this is really useful enough...

I think it is really useful.
One which i encountered was there is a file where each line has tokens
separated by commas. First token is the id and i want to use it in a
special way.

Wouldn't it be nice to say

id, *tokens = line.split(',')

than

tokens = line.split(',')
id = tokens.pop(0)

- anand