title: How to emulate the increment (++) operator?
body: <p>My input is a list, say <code>l</code></p>
  
  <p>It can either contain 4 or 5 elements. I want to assign it to 5 variables , say <code>a</code>, <code>b</code>, <code>c</code>, <code>d</code> and <code>e</code>. </p>
  
  <p>If the list has only 4 elements then the third variable (<code>c</code>) should be <code>None</code>.</p>
  
  <p>If python had an increment (++) operator I could do something like this.</p>
  
  <pre><code>l = [4 or 5 string inputs]
  i = -1
  a = l[i++]
  b = l[i++]
  c = None
  if len(l) &gt; 4:
      c = l[i++]
  d = l[i++]
  e = l[i++]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can't seem to find an elegant way to do this apart from writing <code>i+=1</code> before each assignment. Is there a simpler pythonic way to do this?</p>