On Sat, 31 Dec 2016 06:37 am, Jason Friedman wrote: > $ python > Python 3.6.0 (default, Dec 26 2016, 18:23:08) > [GCC 4.8.4] on linux > Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>> data = ( > ... (1,2), > ... (3,4), > ... ) >>>> [a for a in data] > [(1, 2), (3, 4)] > > Now, this puzzles me: > >>>> [x,y for a in data] > File "<stdin>", line 1 > [x,y for a in data] > ^ > SyntaxError: invalid syntax > > I expected: > [(1, 2), (3, 4)]
Why would you expect that? I would expect the global variables x and y, or if they don't exist, a NameError: py> a = (1, 2) py> x, y Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> NameError: name 'x' is not defined Python has no magic that "x and y mean the first two items of a". Instead, you get a syntax error because the syntax is ambiguous: [x,y for a in data] looks like a list [x, y] except the second item is a syntax error "y for a in data". So let's fix the syntax error: py> data = [(1, 2), (3, 4)] py> [a for a in data] [(1, 2), (3, 4)] py> [(x, y) for a in data] Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "<stdin>", line 1, in <listcomp> NameError: name 'x' is not defined Okay, let's create global variables x and y: py> x = 98 py> y = 99 py> [(x, y) for a in data] [(98, 99), (98, 99)] No surprises there. How about this instead: py> [(x, y) for (x, y) in data] [(1, 2), (3, 4)] That's better! -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list