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Python Functions, Packing, and Unpacking Packing and Unpacking Unpacking Challenge

Posted by William Ray Noble
William Ray Noble
22,190 Points

I'm sure I'm making an obvious mistake on a simple challenge but I don't see where I'm going on with unpacking.

So I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. From what I can tell I've unpacked it into two variables. TAI

unpacking.py 
def unpacker(*args):
    return args

val1 = unpacker('Python')
val2 = unpacker('rocks!')

2 Answers

Brian Davis
Brian Davis
1,628 Points
Brian Davis
Brian Davis
1,628 Points

I've been working this one for an hour, and it shouldn't be this difficult. I"m presuming that there is something in the instructions missing or something, as it should be easy. Any help?

nakalkucing
nakalkucing
12,964 Points
nakalkucing
nakalkucing
12,964 Points

Hi Brian Davis! Sorry it took me so long to get back. Are you still having a problem with this challenge? If so, please post your code below. Happy coding! :)

nakalkucing
nakalkucing
12,964 Points
nakalkucing
nakalkucing
12,964 Points

Hi William Ray Noble! Good job, you're close. At minute 1:00 in the video Unpacking, Ashley shows a similar example to what this challenge is looking for:

def unpacker():
    return (1, 2, 3)
var1, var2, var2 = unpacker()

With the following explanation:

On the right side of this variable assignment, I'm calling the function, unpacker. Unpacker returns a tuple containing the values 1, 2, and 3. Because the left side of our variable assignment has more than one variable name, Python understands that we're trying to unpack this tuple. Just like passing multiple arguments to multiple parameters is positional, so is unpacking a sequence. In this example, the first element in the tuple 1 will be assigned to var1, ect.

Hope this helps! :) Post back if you need more help.

Brandon Pinnow
Brandon Pinnow
2,446 Points

Here is what I came up with.

def unpacker(*args):

return args

val1, val2 = unpacker('Python', 'rocks!')

print(val1)

print(val2)

treehouse:~/workspace$ python unpacking.py
Python
rocks!