Returning a tuple-struct

[groups.20.thebriguy at spamgourmet.com]

I've noticed that there's a few functions that return what appears to
be a tuple, but that also has attributes for each item in the tuple.
For example, time.localtime() returns a time.time_struct, which looks
like a tuple but also like a struct.  That is, I can do:

>>> time.localtime()
(2006, 1, 18, 21, 15, 11, 2, 18, 0)
>>> time.localtime()[3]
21
>>> time.localtime().tm_hour
21

Anyway, I guess there's a few of ways to do this.  In the case above,
it would seem reasonable to override __getitem__() and other things to
get that result.

To my question... It seems like a useful but very simple way to
accomplish the above (that is, to have your return value accessible as
both a sequence and a struct) is to subclass tuple.  Something like
this:

def foo():
    class NewTuple(tuple): pass
    x = NewTuple((1,2))
    x.a, x.b = x
    return x

And so I can do:

x = foo()
print x
print x.a
print x.b

And the result is:

(1, 2)
1
2

So, the question I have is just a style and/or pattern question...
Does anyone do this?  Does is seem reasonably intuitive, or ugly?  Is
there a better way?  Thoughts?

-bri