[python] Head and tail in one line

Is there a pythonic way to unpack a list in the first element and the "tail" in a single command?

For example:

>> head, tail = **some_magic applied to** [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]

Python 2, using lambda

>>> head, tail = (lambda lst: (lst[0], lst[1:]))([1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55])
>>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]

Building on the Python 2 solution from @GarethLatty, the following is a way to get a single line equivalent without intermediate variables in Python 2.

t=iter([1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]);h,t = [(h,list(t)) for h in t][0]

If you need it to be exception-proof (i.e. supporting empty list), then add:

t=iter([]);h,t = ([(h,list(t)) for h in t]+[(None,[])])[0]

If you want to do it without the semicolon, use:

h,t = ([(h,list(t)) for t in [iter([1,2,3,4])] for h in t]+[(None,[])])[0]

>>> mylist = [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
>>> head, tail = mylist[0], mylist[1:]
>>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]

For O(1) complexity of head,tail operation you should use deque however.

Following way:

from collections import deque
l = deque([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9])
head, tail = l.popleft(), l

It's useful when you must iterate through all elements of the list. For example in naive merging 2 partitions in merge sort.