Extended tuple unpacking in Python 2

Question

Is it possible to simulate extended tuple unpacking in Python 2?

Specifically, I have a for loop:

for a, b, c in mylist:

which work

Answer 1

You can write a very basic function that has exactly the same functionality as the python3 extended unpack. Slightly verbose for legibility. Note that 'rest' is the position of where the asterisk would be (starting with first position 1, not 0)

def extended_unpack(seq, n=3, rest=3):
    res = []; cur = 0
    lrest = len(seq) - (n - 1)    # length of 'rest' of sequence
    while (cur < len(seq)):
        if (cur != rest):         # if I am not where I should leave the rest
            res.append(seq[cur])  # append current element to result
        else:                     # if I need to leave the rest
            res.append(seq[cur : lrest + cur]) # leave the rest
            cur = cur + lrest - 1 # current index movded to include rest
        cur = cur + 1             # update current position
     return(res)