Why single element tuple is interpreted as that element in python?

Question

Could anyone explain why single element tuple is interpreted as that element in Python?

And

Why don\'t they just print the tuple (1,) as (

Answer 1

A single element tuple is never treated as the contained element. Parentheses are mostly useful for grouping, not for creating tuples; a comma does that.

Why don't they just print (1,) as (1)?

Probably because printing a builtin container type gives a representation that can be used to recreate the container object via , say eval:

The docs for __repr__ provides some clarity on this:

If at all possible, this should look like a valid Python expression that could be used to recreate an object with the same value

Answering your question, (1) is just integer 1 with a grouping parenthesis. In order to recreate the singleton tuple via its representation, it has to be printed as (1,) which is the valid syntax for creating the tuple.

>>> t = '(1,)'
>>> i = '(1)'
>>> eval(t)
(1,) # tuple
>>> eval(i)
1    # int