Question

I’m working my way through Gmail access using imaplib and came across:

# Count the unread emails
status, response = imap_server.status('INBOX', "(UNSEEN)")
unreadcount = int(response[0].split()[2].strip(').,]'))
print unreadcount

I just wish to know what:

status,

does in front of the “response =”. I would google it, but I have no idea what I’d even ask to find an answer for that :(.

Thanks.

Answer 1

When a function returns a tuple, it can be read by more than one variable.

def ret_tup():
    return 1,2 # can also be written with parens

a,b = ret_tup()

a and b are now 1 and 2 respectively