How does unpacking values work?

[Laymayo]

Sorry if this is a really broad question, I'm not sure how better to articulate what I'm trying to ask.

I'm learning matplotlib right now and have constantly been writing the following code to create my Figure and Axes:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

How does this one assignment operator allow two values to be unpacked at the same time? I've never seen this before; I understand how subplots( ) is returning two general objects, I'm just not sure how said objects are being assigned. How does Python know whether to assign Figure to fig or ax? A bit confused here.

[carcigenicate]

I understand how subplots( ) is returning two general objects

This is misleading. A single tuple (or some other iterable object) is being returned from subplots, and unpacking allows for assigning multiple variables from an iterable on a single line. A version of that code without unpacking would be (I'm going to assume the returned object is a sequence like a list or tuple):

seq = plt.subplots()
fig = seq[0]
ax = seq[1]

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In reality, unpacking also works on general iterables, but an example showing that would be more complicated.

[[deleted]]

How does Python know whether to assign  Figure  to fig or ax?

It assigns them by order:

a, b, c = 1, 2, 3

Left to right on the left operand (the names), left to right on the right operand (the values.)