Star * operator on left vs right side of an assignment statement
问题 This questions stems from PEP 448 -- Additional Unpacking Generalizations and is present in Python 3.5 as far as I'm aware (and not back-ported to 2.x ). Specifically, in the section Disadvantages , the following is noted: Whilst *elements, = iterable causes elements to be a list , elements = *iterable , causes elements to be a tuple . The reason for this may confuse people unfamiliar with the construct. Which does indeed hold, for iterable = [1, 2, 3, 4] , the first case yields a list : >>>