From: Luca Pireddu <ilveroluca@...>
Date: 2005-05-21T03:15:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Multiple return and parallel assignement

David A. Black wrote:

> Hi --
> 
> On Sat, 21 May 2005, Eric Mahurin wrote:
> 
>
> It's hard, I find, to come up with an exact description of what the
> unarr?ay (unary unarray) operator does that fits every case.  The
> closest I've come is: *a = x means: a gets assigned that which, when
> stripped of one level of array-ness, is x.  Thus:
> 
>    *a = 1,2   # [1,2] stripped of [] is 1,2 so a is [1,2]
>    *a = *[1,2] # a stripped of [] is [1,2] stripped of [], so
>                # a is [1,2]
> 
>    def x(*args); end
>    x(1,2,3)   # [1,2,3] stripped of [] is 1,2,3, so args is [1,2,3]
>    x([1,2,3]) # [[1,2,3]] stripped of [] is [1,2,3], so args
>               # is [[1,2,3]]
> 
> Then there's
> 
>    a = 1,2   # automatic arraying -- the opposite of *
>    a = *[1,2]  # un-arraying followed by automatic arraying :-)
> 
> or something like that.
> 
> 
> David
> 

Maybe a simpler way to look at it is *a = x means a = [x], or simply enclose
the rhs in an array before assignment.

Luca