Converting string to tuple without splitting characters

Question

I am striving to convert a string to a tuple without splitting the characters of the string in the process. Can somebody suggest an easy method to do this. Need a one liner.

Answer 1

Subclassing tuple where some of these subclass instances may need to be one-string instances throws up something interesting.

class Sequence( tuple ):
    def __init__( self, *args ):
        # initialisation...
        self.instances = []

    def __new__( cls, *args ):
        for arg in args:
            assert isinstance( arg, unicode ), '# arg %s not unicode' % ( arg, )
        if len( args ) == 1:
            seq = super( Sequence, cls ).__new__( cls, ( args[ 0 ], ) )
        else:
            seq = super( Sequence, cls ).__new__( cls, args )
        print( '# END new Sequence len %d' % ( len( seq ), ))
        return seq

NB as I learnt from this thread, you have to put the comma after args[ 0 ].

The print line shows that a single string does not get split up.

NB the comma in the constructor of the subclass now becomes optional :

Sequence( u'silly' )

or

Sequence( u'silly', )