[maya][pymel] When a PyNode is a list[]?

Coding
,
1

After years I’m jumping back into Maya, been trying pymel lately.

A frustration I have is that some pymel functions seem to return PyNodes,
while others return a list of [PyNode, string].
so depending on how I acquired a node, and what I pass it to, I reference it as

 my_node

or

my_node[0]

this, combined with python’s loose typing is giving me a bit of a headache.

is there a general rule to apply about when I can expect a PyNode vs a List?
or do I just have to watch each pymel fucntion for what it spits out?

2

You could pass it through a function that always returns the result as a list, example:

#GENERAL FUNCTION: ADD AND RETURN PYNODES TO EACH OBJECT PASSED IN
def addPyNode(objects=[]):
    #--DESCRIPTION-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    # Tries to add a PyNode to each object passed in, raise error if it doesn't work.
    #--EXAMPLES--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    # addPyNode(objects=['char_l_arm', 'char_r_arm'])
    #------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    #Create a variable for the result
    result = []
    #Flatten the input-list
    objects = pm.ls(objects, flatten=True)
    #If the input has data
    if objects:
        #For each object
        for x in range(0, len(objects)):
            #Try to add a PyNode to the current object
            try:
                tmpString = str(objects[x])
                result.append(pm.PyNode(tmpString))
            #If it didn't work, raise an error message
            except:
                raise Exception, "function: 'addPyNode' - Could not add a PyNode to the input: " + objects[x]
        #Return the objects as a list
        return list(result)