Can I do array destructuring in VimL?

Question

Can I do this in Vimscript?

let [a, b] = s:MyFunc()

function! s:MyFunc()
  return [1, 2]
endfunction

Answer 1

Yes you can, but Vim calls it list unpacking. It can be found in Vim's help:

:h let-unpack

Vim allows you to create and populate two variables from a list:

let [var1, var2] = mylist

which is equivalent to:

let var1 = mylist[0]
let var2 = mylist[1]

There is also an (untagged) section on that help page titled "List unpack". It says you can do:

let [var1, var2; rest] = mylist

to collect an optional unknown number of items in a list.

And you can use a related trick to perform operations on multiple existing variables at once:

let [var1, var2] += 1

There is lots to like about this language.

However I don't believe any such magic is available for Dictionaries as of yet.