Default paranmeter for packed values

[MRAB]

Xavier Ho wrote:
> G'day Pythoneers,
> 
> I ran into a strange problem today: why does Python not allow default 
> paranmeters for packed arguments in a function def?
> 
>> >> def test(a = 1, b = (2, 3)):
> ...     print a, b
> ...    
>> >> test()
> 1 (2, 3)
> 
>> >> def t(a, *b = (3, 4)):
>   File "<input>", line 1
>     def t(a, *b = (3, 4)):
>                 ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> 
> What was the rationale behind this design?
> 
Perhaps it was that no-one ever thought of doing that! :-)