Rats! vararg assignments don't work

[samwyse]

Gary Herron wrote:
> samwyse wrote:
> 
>>I'm a relative newbie to Python, so please bear with me.  After seeing 
>>how varargs work in parameter lists, like this:
>>     def func(x, *arglist):
>>and this:
>>     x = func(1, *moreargs)
>>I thought that I'd try this:
>>     first, *rest = arglist
>>Needless to say, it didn't work.  That leaves me with two questions.
>>
>>First, is there a good way to do this?  For now, I'm using this:
>>     first, rest = arglist[0], arglist[1:]
>>but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
>>  
> 
> Well, your moreargs parameter is a tuple, and there are innumerable ways
> to process a tuple. (And even more if you convert it to a list.)

My use-case is (roughtly) this:
     first, *rest = f.readline().split()
     return dispatch_table{first}(*rest)