Unpacking "the rest" of the elements in list comprehension - python3to2 <p>In Python 3, I could use <code>for i, *items in tuple</code> to isolate the first time from the tuple and the rest into items, e.g.:</p> <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; x = [(2, '_', 'loves', 'love', 'VBZ', 'VBZ', '_', '0', 'ROOT', '_', '_'), (1, '_', 'John', 'John', 'NNP', 'NNP', '_', '2', 'nsubj', '_', '_'), (3, '_', 'Mary', 'Mary', 'NNP', 'NNP', '_', '2', 'dobj', '_', '_'), (4, '_', '.', '.', '.', '.', '_', '2', 'punct', '_', '_')] &gt;&gt;&gt; [items for n, *items in sorted(x)] [['_', 'John', 'John', 'NNP', 'NNP', '_', '2', 'nsubj', '_', '_'], ['_', 'loves', 'love', 'VBZ', 'VBZ', '_', '0', 'ROOT', '_', '_'], ['_', 'Mary', 'Mary', 'NNP', 'NNP', '_', '2', 'dobj', '_', '_'], ['_', '.', '.', '.', '.', '_', '2', 'punct', '_', '_']] </code></pre> <p>I need to backport this to Python 2 and I can't use the <code>*</code> pointer to collect the rest of the items in the tuple. </p> <ul> <li><p>What is the equivalent in Python 2?</p></li> <li><p>Is it still possible to achieve the same using the list comprehension?</p></li> <li><p>What is the technical name for this <code>*</code> usage? Unpacking? Isolating? Pointers?</p></li> <li><p>Is there a <code>__future__</code> import that can be used such that I can use the same syntax in Python 2?</p></li> </ul>