Not using explicit unpacking

When you see multiple variables being defined followed by an assignment to a list (e.g. elem0, elem1, elem2 = elems, where elem0, elem1, and elem2 are variables and elems is a list), Python will automatically iterate through the list and assign elems[0] to elem0, elems[1] to elem1, and so on.

Anti-pattern

The code below manually creates multiple variables to access the items in a list. This code is error-prone and unnecessarily verbose, as well as tedious to write.

elems = [4, 7, 18]

elem0 = elems[0]
elem1 = elems[1]
elem2 = elems[2]

Best practice

Use unpacking

The modified code below is functionally equivalent to the original code, but this code is more concise and less prone to error.

elems = [4, 7, 18]

elem0, elem1, elem2 = elems