Default paranmeter for packed values

[Chris Rebert]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Xavier Ho <contact at xavierho.com> wrote:
> 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?

It's not specific to default arguments:

*z = (1,2,3) #==>

  File "<stdin>", line 1
    *z = (1,2,3)
SyntaxError: starred assignment target must be in a list or tuple

It doesn't really make sense to use * in such situations anyway, you
can just do the normal `z = (1,2,3)`.

Cheers,
Chris
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