Problem

You have an N-element tuple or sequence that you would like to unpack into a collection of N variables.



In [3]:

    
# Example 1
p = (4, 5)
x, y = p
print x
print y

4
5



In [4]:

    
# Example 2
data = ['ACME', 50, 91.1, (2012, 12, 21)]
name, shares, price, date = data
print name
print date

name, shares, price, (year, mon, day) = data
print name
print year
print mon
print day









    



ACME
(2012, 12, 21)
ACME
2012
12
21



In [5]:

    
# Example 3
# error with mismatch in number of elements
p = (4, 5)
x, y, z = p









    



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-5-b612f455712e> in <module>()
      2 # error with mismatch in number of elements
      3 p = (4, 5)
----> 4 x, y, z = p

ValueError: need more than 2 values to unpack



In [6]:

    
# Example 4: string
s = 'Hello'
a, b, c, d, e = s
print a
print b
print e









    



H
e
o



In [7]:

    
# Example 5
# discard certain values
data = [ 'ACME', 50, 91.1, (2012, 12, 21) ]
_, shares, price, _ = data
print shares
print price