[omaranto]

But even with a generator, as you would get from range in Python 3, the assignment

    a, *b = range(10)

makes b into a list. (And I think the star syntax in assignments is only Python 3, as far as I remember Python 2 only has star in argument lists of functions.)

[__del__]

You're right, python2 doesn't have the extended unpacking (star) syntax. Furthermore, this:

    >>> a, *b = range(2**128)
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    OverflowError: Python int too large to convert to C ssize_t

Ha.