4 ms·

a, *rest, b = range(10) print(rest) # prints [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] In which context could this be useful?

• Smaug123 9y ago
  If you want to split a list into a head and a tail: head, *tail = list_to_split In Python 2, the best way I know of for this is head, tail = list_to_split[0], list_to_split[1:] which is unwieldy.
• tomrod 9y ago
  When you want to quickly slice off the first and last elements of a list?
  • kmill 9y ago
    If it's a list (and not a generator like `range`), then `l[1:-1]` will do.
    • tomrod 9y ago
      Of course. Consider though: a, b, c = (l[0], l[1:-1], l[-1]) is also feasible, but I think it adds a bit of overhead