How to create a tuple with only one element

Question

In the below example I would expect all the elements to be tuples, why is a tuple converted to a string when it only contains a single string?

>>> a         


        

Answer 1

Your first two examples are not tuples, they are strings. Single-item tuples require a trailing comma, as in:

>>> a = [('a',), ('b',), ('c', 'd')]
>>> a
[('a',), ('b',), ('c', 'd')]