[BoppreH]

To be clear, this is only a problem if your array can ever have less than two values, or if you require that `first` and `last` be different values.

The mistake is suggesting the unpacking without caveats, because it'll fail in situations that the naive solution doesn't:

    items = [1]
    first = items[0]
    middle = items[1:-1]
    last = items[-1]

This will still work as long as you have any elements.