You could also use the ,= operator, of course:
varname ,= [...]
varname ,= [...]
Superficially it looks like an operator, but I suspect that's merely because of whitespace freedom; i.e., a, = [0] is equivalent to a,=[0] and a ,= [0].
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642028/what-is-the-name-...
Sure it is! And in Python 3 there's the ,_*= operator, similar to lisp's car:
varname ,_*= [1, 2, 3] # varname == 1