Python has this elegant destructuring-assignment iterable-unpacking syntax that every serious Pythonista and her dog tends to use where\u00ebver possible. So where a novice might write<\/p>\n
split_address = address.split(':')\r\nhost = split_address[0]\r\nport = split_address[1]<\/code><\/pre>\na serious Pythonista (and<\/em> her dog) would instead say<\/p>\nhost, port = address.split(':')<\/code><\/pre>\nwhich is clearly superior on grounds of succinctness and beauty; we don't want our vision to be cluttered with this ugly sub-zero, sub-one notation when we can just declare a sequence of names.<\/p>\n
Consider, however, the somewhat-uncommon case where we have an iterable that, for whatever reason, we happen to know<\/em> contains only one element, and we want to assign that one element to a variable. Here, I've seen people who ought to know better fall back to indexing:<\/p>\nif len(jobs) == 1:\r\n job = jobs[0]<\/code><\/pre>\nBut there's no reason<\/em> to violate the \u00e6sthetic principle of "use a length-n<\/em> (or smaller<\/a>) tuple of identifiers on the left side of a destructuring assignment in order to name the elements of a length-n<\/em> iterable" just because n<\/em> happens to be one:<\/p>\nif len(jobs) == 1:\r\n job, = jobs<\/code><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Python has this elegant destructuring-assignment iterable-unpacking syntax that every serious Pythonista and her dog tends to use where\u00ebver possible. So where a novice might write split_address = address.split(':') host = split_address[0] port = split_address[1] a serious Pythonista (and her dog) … Continue reading