ValueError vs IndexError, unpacking arguments with string.split

[Morten W. Petersen]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 4:02 PM Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> wrote:

> Morten W. Petersen wrote:
>
> > I've been reading up on a bit of C++, Assembler etc. lately, so maybe my

> > mind expected an IndexError because of that, but isn't it logical that
> the
> > string is parsed and split, and then later the unpacking operation fails
> > with an IndexError?
>
> You might think that
>
> a, b = c
>
> is equivalent to
>
> a = c[0]
> b = c[1]
>
> but the c above can be an arbitrary iterable:
>
> >>> a, b = iter("ab")
> >>> a, b
> ('a', 'b')
> >>> a, b = iter("abc")
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> ValueError: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
>
> So there is not necessarily a lookup by index.
>


Ah, of course.  OK, right you are. :)

-Morten

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