Why can't I add a tuple to a list with the '+' operator in Python?

Question

Python not support adding a tuple to a list:

>>> [1,2,3] + (4,5,6)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File \"\", line 1, in 

        

Answer 1

Why python doesn't support adding different type: simple answer is that they are of different types, what if you try to add a iterable and expect a list out? I myself would like to return another iterable. Also consider ['a','b']+'cd' what should be the output? considering explicit is better than implicit all such implicit conversions are disallowed.

To overcome this limitation use extend method of list to add any iterable e.g.

l = [1,2,3]
l.extend((4,5,6))

If you have to add many list/tuples write a function

def adder(*iterables):
    l = []
    for i in iterables:
        l.extend(i)
    return l

print adder([1,2,3], (3,4,5), range(6,10))

output:

[1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]