but ruby, python etc.. can just extract the list too, it's just an extra method call on the same object (perhaps there could be destructuring too in modern ruby

but ruby, python etc.. can just extract the list too, it's just an extra method call on the same object (perhaps there could be destructuring too in modern ruby/python) hour, min, sec = /(\d\d):(\d\d):(\d\d)/.match('10:11:12').captures or hour, min, sec = re.compile(r'(\d\d):(\d\d):(\d\d)').match('10:11:12').groups() ruby & python will explode if there is no match rather than fail silently but I'm not convinced the difference is huge.