unzip: perform the opposite of zip

zip

>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = ["one", "two", "three"]
>>> zip(a, b)
<zip object at 0x7fd30310b508>
>>> list(zip(a, b))
[(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three')]

unzip
How to perform the opposite of zip? That is, we have [(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three')], and we want to get back [1, 2, 3] and ["one", "two", "three"].

>>> li
[(1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three')]
>>> a, b = zip(*li)
>>> a
(1, 2, 3)
>>> b
('one', 'two', 'three')

Notice that the results are tuples.

More info here.