why does star unpacking in python give a list

Question

I am curious on why python3's star unpacking returns me an instance of a list as compared to a tuple (which is returned by an asterisk in function argument). Is this a python's idiosyncrasy, or there is a good reason behind this.

In [1]: def foo(*args):
   ...:     print(type(args))
   ...:     

In [2]: foo(1, 2, 3, 4)
<class 'tuple'>

In [3]: first, *rest = (1, 2, 3, 4)

In [4]: type(rest)
Out[4]: list

Answer 1

They figured a list would be easier to process:

After a short discussion on the python-3000 list [1], the PEP was accepted by Guido in its current form. Possible changes discussed were:

• ...
• Make the starred target a tuple instead of a list. This would be consistent with a function's *args, but make further processing of the result harder.