unpack the first two elements in list/tuple

Question

Is there a way in python to do like this:

a, b, = 1, 3, 4, 5

And then:

>>> a
1
>>> b
3

Answer 1

Or in Python 3.x you could do this:

  a, *b = 1, 3, 4

giving you:

In [15]: a
Out[15]: 1

In [16]: b
Out[16]: [3, 4]

It would avoid the exception, though you would have to parse b. This assume that you only want to have two variables on the left of the =, otherwise you could use

a, b, *ignore = ....

with v3.x