The Python interpreter as acting totally sanely. The author is asking it to loop over a list (or any iterable) and destructure each of the elements. But is the

The Python interpreter as acting totally sanely. The author is asking it to loop over a list (or any iterable) and destructure each of the elements. But is then providing a a list containing some strings, none of which can be destructured. Reducing to just the second part of the loop: [(x, z) for x, _, z, *_ in ["0x2d41854", "3", "0x80001a14", "(0xbffd)"]] IE in non-list-comprehension form: for x, _, z, *_ in ["0x2d41854", "3", "0x80001a14", "(0xbffd)"]: IE, the first element is expanded as: x, _, z, *_ = "0x2d41854" Which is clearly nonsensical.