Python Unpack List ( Multiple Ways )

Python unpack list is extracting values from the list into individual elements. One way is using variables with an assignment operator with indexing. In this article, we will create a sample list of python with minimal elements. We will understand all the methods with the reference to the same sample example list.

python unpack list ( Solution ) –

Firstly let’s create a sample list.

list_sample = [1,2,3,4,5]

Method 1 : (Assigning each element to the respective element ) –

This method is only fine if the list size is small. Also, we need to make sure that we need to use an equal number of variables with the length of the list.

var1,var2,var3,var4,var5=list_sample
print(var1)
print(var2)
print(var3)
print(var4)
print(var5)

Here if we use even a single less variable than the size of the list, the interpreter will throw the below error.

python unpack list error if using less variable

Method 2 : (Using * for sequence assignment ) –

This approach we can apply this if we are not very sure about the length of the list. Here we will use some variables for the initial element of the list and for the rest we will use (* ) for sequence assignment. Let’s understand with the below example.

var1,var2,*var=list_sample
print(var1)
print(var2)
print(var)

unpack list with astrick — unpack the list with astrick

Here in the above code, we want to extract the first two elements of the list, and the rest we will keep as a sub sequence of the list. Here if you don’t want to assign any variable with * then simply you can use the _ operator also.

Data Science Learner Team