File unpacking
After learning that strings can be unpacked in Python, I shared the short article on Twitter.
As a reply, @dabeaz suggested I tried doing it with a file:
Now, try it with a file...
— David Beazley (@dabeaz) September 24, 2021
header, *data = open("somedata.csv")
After seeing how strings can be unpacked, unpacking a file didn't look so weird, but it was still a pleasant surprise!
But it “does make sense”, after all you can iterate directly over a file, which essentially iterates over the lines of the file.
Grab a CSV file "my_data.csv", for example with this data:
Name, Surnames
John, Doe
Mary, SmithThen, in your Python REPL, you can get this to work:
>>> header, *data = open("my_data.csv")
>>> header
'Name, Surnames\n'
>>> data
['John, Doe\n', 'Mary, Smith\n']It is not as useful as using the
csv
module to read the CSV
data in and process it, but it is still a nifty trick.
Come to think of it, if there is a place when this will be useful, probably won't be with CSV files...
I'll let you know if I put this little trick to good use!
That's it for now! Stay tuned and I'll see you around!
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