[Python-Dev] Half-baked proposal: * (and **?) in assignments (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon bac@OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Sat, 23 Nov 2002 00:48:25 -0800 (PST)

[Brian Quinlan]

Need is a bit too strong. But which do you like better:

year, month, day = time.localtime()[0:3] or year, month, day, *dummy = time.localtime()

In all honesty, the top one. The *dummy variable strikes me as cluttering the assignment variables. I would rather have clutter on the RHS of an assignment then on the LHS. Personally it takes me a little bit more effort to realize that *dummy is going to get assigned what ever is left over and that it will be unneeded. I would feel the need to delete the variable so as to not constantly remember what exactly what it is for or holding (yes, good naming can handle that but I don't want the bother of having to read a variable name just to realize that I don't want the variable).

The reason this kind of thing is okay for parameter passing is that you might have the possibility of extra arguments, but you want that possibility. This example, though, does not have that benefit since you know you don't want what dummy gets.

I guess I just like very precise, clean assignment and I don't see this ability helping with that keeping that view.

-Brett