What is the syntax rule for having trailing commas in tuple definitions?

Question

In the case of a single element tuple, the trailing comma is required.

a = (\'foo\',)

What about a tuple with multiple elements? It seems t

Answer 1

Another reason that this exists is that it makes code generation and __repr__ functions easier to write. For example, if you have some object that is built like obj(arg1, arg2, ..., argn), then you can just write obj.__repr__ as

def __repr__(self):
    l = ['obj(']
    for arg in obj.args: # Suppose obj.args == (arg1, arg2, ..., argn)
        l.append(repr(arg))
        l.append(', ')
    l.append(')')
    return ''.join(l)

If a trailing comma wasn't allowed, you would have to special case the last argument. In fact, you could write the above in one line using a list comprehension (I've written it out longer to make it easier to read). It wouldn't be so easy to do that if you had to special case the last term.

Answer 2

It is only required for single-item tuples to disambiguate defining a tuple or an expression surrounded by parentheses.

(1)  # the number 1 (the parentheses are wrapping the expression `1`)
(1,) # a 1-tuple holding a number 1

For more than one item, it is no longer necessary since it is perfectly clear it is a tuple. However, the trailing comma is allowed to make defining them using multiple lines easier. You could add to the end or rearrange items without breaking the syntax because you left out a comma on accident.

e.g.,

someBigTuple = (
                   0,
                   1,
                   2,
                   3,
                   4,
                   5,
                   6,
                   7,
                   8,
                   9,
                   10,
                   #...
                   10000000000,
               )

Note that this applies to other collections (e.g., lists and dictionaries) too and not just tuples.

Answer 3

In all cases except the empty tuple the comma is the important thing. Parentheses are only required when required for other syntactic reasons: to distinguish a tuple from a set of function arguments, operator precedence, or to allow line breaks.

The trailing comma for tuples, lists, or function arguments is good style especially when you have a long initialisation that is split over multiple lines. If you always include a trailing comma then you won't add another line to the end expecting to add another element and instead just creating a valid expression:

a = [
   "a",
   "b"
   "c"
]

Assuming that started as a 2 element list that was later extended it has gone wrong in a perhaps not immediately obvious way. Always include the trailing comma and you avoid that trap.

Answer 4

Coding style is your taste, If you think coding standard matters there is a PEP-8 That can guide you.

What do you think of the result of following expression?

x = (3)
x = (3+2)
x = 2*(3+2)

Yep, x is just an number.