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() ? ``` I.e. so that a gets assigned 1, b gets 2, and c is undefined This is similar to this ``` def f() return( 1,2 ) a,b = f() ```

Accepted Answer

It wouldn't make any sense for unpacking to depend on the variable names. The closest you can get is:

```
a, b = [f()[k] for k in ('a', 'b')]
```

This, of course, evaluates `f()` twice.

You could write a function:

```
def unpack(d, *keys)
    return tuple(d[k] for k in keys)
```

Then do:

```
a, b = unpack(f(), 'a', 'b')
```

This is really all overkill though. Something simple would be better:

```
result = f()
a, b = result['a'], result['b']
```

Assign contents of Python dict to multiple variables at once?

Solution

Problem