Passing functions which have multiple return values as arguments in Python

Question

So, Python functions can return multiple values. It struck me that it would be convenient (though a bit less readable) if the following were possible.

a = [[         


        

Answer 1

printa(*cord())

The * here is an argument expansion operator... well I forget what it's technically called, but in this context it takes a list or tuple and expands it out so the function sees each list/tuple element as a separate argument.

It's basically the reverse of the * you might use to capture all non-keyword arguments in a function definition:

def fn(*args):
    # args is now a tuple of the non-keyworded arguments
    print args

fn(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

prints (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

fn(*[1, 2, 3, 4, 5])

does the same.