Question

Consider this function getPos() which returns a tuple. What is the difference between the two following assignments? Somewhere I saw an example where the first assignment was used but when I just tried the second one, I was surprised it also worked. So, is there really a difference, or does Python just figure out that the left-hand part should be a tuple?

def getPos():
  return (1, 1)

(x, y) = getPos() # First assignment
x, y   = getPos() # Second assignment

Answer 1

Read about tuples:

A tuple consists of a number of values separated by commas (…)

So parenthesis does not make a tuple a tuple. The commas do it.

Parenthesis are only needed if you have weird nested structures:

x, (y, (w, z)), r