On 6/24/2011 4:06 PM, Tycho Andersen wrote:
tmp = {} x['huh'] = tmp # NameEror!That is, the right hand sides of assignments are evaluated before the left hand sides. That is (somehow?) not the case here.
You are parsing "a = b = c" as "a = (b = c)" which works in a language in which assignment is an expression, but does not work in Python where assignment is a statement. You have to parse it more as "(a = b) = c" but that does not work since then the first '=' is not what it seems. It is more like "(both a and b) = c". Perhaps best to expand "a = b = c" to "a = c; b = c" and see the first as an abbreviation thereof -- just delete the 'c;'.
If I have ever used this sort of multiple assignment, it has been for simple unambiguous things like "a = b = 0".
-- Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
