why * is not like unquote (scheme)

[Oren Tirosh]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:26:07PM +0200, Amir Hadar wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'me tring to create a factory function that create a class as follow:
> 
> def CreatePreviewFrame(*addins):
>     class tmp(cPreviewFrame,*addins):
>         pass
>     return tmp
> 
> I checked a simpler case:
> (1,2,*(3,4))
> and this is also syntax error.
> 
> but I can path parameters to a function as follow:
> 
> def f(a,b):
>      print a,b
> 
> l = ("a","b")
> f(*l)
> 
> So why doesn't it work in all cases?

The * is specific to calls. It does not apply to other places in the 
systax where a comma-separated list is acceptable.

You can do what you want using the exec statement or by directly 
creating the class object with new.classobj() instead of using the
class statement.

    Oren