Misleading error message of the day

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

Roy Smith wrote:
> I just spent a while beating my head against this one.
>
> # Python 2.6
>   
>>>> a, b = 'foo'
>>>>         
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> ValueError: too many values to unpack
>
> The real problem is that there's too *few* values to unpack!  It should 
> have been
>
> a, b = 'foo', 'bar'
>
> I understand why it's generating the exception it does (the string is an 
> iterable), but man, did that message throw off my thought processes and 
> lead me down some totally bogus debugging paths.
>
> It's an unusual case to want to unpack a string.  Maybe the message 
> should changed to "too {many, few} values to unpack (are you sure you 
> wanted to unpack a string?)" if the RHS is a basestring?
>   
string are iterable, considering this, the error is correct.

Values to unpack in 'foo' are 'f', 'o', 'o'

 > a,b,c = 'foo'

 > print a,b,c
f o o


JM