Jeff R. Allen wrote:
Hello,
I am working my way through the tutorial, and I like trying
variations, just to see what expected errors look like, and other ways
things could be written.
I tried a, b = 0, 0 and that worked.
Then I tried this to (maybe) set both a and b to 0:
a, b = 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable
I understand why it doesn't work, but I don't understand the wording
of the exception. Could someone explain how I accidentally introduced
iteration into the picture with my syntax? I have a feeling there's an
interesting lesson hidden in this example...
Thanks.
-jeff
What you've really got going across the = sign is a list, or something
like it. On the left side, you have exactly two items, so on the right
side you need a list or tuple of length 2. In your first example, you
have a tuple, because of the comma.
The generalization implied above is an iterable. Lists and tuples are
iterables, but you could also use a generator, for example. Anything
that you could iterate over, such as with a for statement.
a, b, c, d = xrange(4)
Anyway, in your second example, the system is trying to interpret the
right side as an iterable, in order to get two items from it.
DaveA
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