Assign contents of Python dict to multiple variables at once?

Question

I would like to do something like this

def f():
    return { \'a\' : 1, \'b\' : 2, \'c\' : 3 }

{ a, b } = f()     # or { \'a\', \'b\' } = f() ?

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Answer 1

You could use (or abuse) a function attribute to do this:

>>> def f():
...    f.a=1
...    f.b=2
...    return { 'a' : f.a, 'b' : f.b, 'c' : 3 }
... 
>>> f()
{'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2}
>>> a,b=f.a,f.b
>>> a,b
(1, 2)

Be aware that the attributes only have value after f() is called or manually assigned.

I (rarely) use function attributes as a fill-in for C's static class variables like so:

>>> def f(i):
...    f.static+=i
...    return f.static
>>> f.static=0
>>> f(1)
1
>>> f(3)
4

There are better ways to do this, but just to be complete...