I said exactly what I meant, the parentheses around the values creates a tuple that you have no reference to! It also has a side effect of binding the names inside the tuple to a value and placing them in the local namespace( implicit tuple unpacking ). It might be the "same" as no parens but it isn't very clear. If you want a tuple make it explicit, if you want individual names make it explicit. >>> def f(q,w,e,r): ... return q,w,e,r ... >>> # diff names >>> a,b,c,d= f(1,2,3,4)# explicit tuple unpacking >>> dir() ['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'f', 'shell'] >>> del a,b,c,d >>> # where is the tuple >>> (a,b,c,d)= f(1,2,3,4)# implicit tuple unpacking !? >>> dir() ['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'f', 'shell'] >>> del a,b,c,d >>> # Where is the tuple (a,s,d,f)? There isn't one. >>> # assign to a single name ( don't do tuple unpacking ) >>> tup=f(1,2,3,4) >>> dir() ['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__', 'f', 'shell', 'tup'] Now there is. Steve since you are closer to expert than novice you understand the difference. I feel this can be confusing to newbies, maybe you disagree. M.E.Farmer
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