I have long thought "[]" /simply/ is a list constructor syntax. What do you think of the following? t = "aze" print t, list(t), [t] print list(list(t)), list([t]), [list(t)], [[t]] ==> aze ['a', 'z', 'e'] ['aze'] ['a', 'z', 'e'] ['aze'] [['a', 'z', 'e']] [['aze']]