Why does []=range(0) not raise and exception in Python 3

Asked Oct 30 '18 at 14:13

Active Oct 30 '18 at 14:13

Viewed 39 times

I am perplexed as to why these seemingly illegal assignment runs fine in Python 3.

[]=range(0)

After discovering this completely by accident I started messing around and found that

[]=range(1,1)

also works, but all of the below raise an exception just as I would expect.

[]=range(1)
[]=range(1,2)
[0]=range(0)
[0,1]=range(2)

What's going on under the hood here?

asked Oct 30 '18 at 14:13

sup3r_conductor

those raise different exception types: too many values to unpack, or can't assign to literal. – Jean-François Fabre Oct 30 '18 at 14:17
It's like `[a, b] = [1, 2]` -> `a = 1; b = 2` just with an empty list of names of the left. See the duplicate for more info. – timgeb Oct 30 '18 at 14:19
1

Thanks. I didn't know python could do this, but it makes sense. – sup3r_conductor Oct 30 '18 at 14:21

0 Answers0