Question: I am struggling with something and have tracked it down to the difference between two lists inside my code: from the Python Debugger:

```
(Pdb) Values
['Thing1', 'Thing2', 'Thing3']
(Pdb) values2
[['Thing1', 'Thing2', 'Thing3']]

```

I *do NOT* want the double brackets, what does this mean and how do I get rid of them?

```
'Values' creation was by:
values = ['Thing1','Thing2','Thing3']

```

'Values2' creation was by:

```
for report in Report.objects.filter(id=id):
        values2.append([str(report.name), str(report.subject), str(report.description)])

```

Why am I getting this difference and how can I get Values2 to look like Values ?

Answer: 
Don't think of it as "double brackets". Think of it as two sets of single brackets, one inside the other. A set of brackets means you have a list. Two sets of single brackets means you have two lists. One set of single brackets inside another means you have a list inside another list.

This is because the value you appended was a list, because you did `values2.append([...])`. The `[...]` is a list, so you appended a list; that is, you put a nested list inside `values2`.

If you don't want that, you could do:

```
values2.extend([str(report.name), str(report.subject), str(report.description)])

```

`extend` will add each element of the list as a separate element, instead of adding the whole list as one element. (Whether this will actually work in the larger context of your program depends on what you actually do with `values2`.)
If you look at your loop

```
for report in Report.objects.filter(id=id):
    values2.append( [ str(report.name), str(report.subject), str(report.description) ] )

```

you can see that what you are *appending* to `values2` is the the list

```
[ str(report.name), str(report.subject), str(report.description) ]

```

so `values2` - assuming it was empty in the first place - now has *one* element, being that list, and it looks like

```
[
    ['Thing1', 'Thing2', 'Thing3'],
]

```

as you described.

If you want to append the three *strings* instead then you have to do it one at a time, like this

```
for report in Report.objects.filter(id=id):
    values2.append(str(report.name))
    values2.append(str(report.subject))
    values2.append(str(report.description))

```

or you could use `extend` instead, but I believe that would be less clear.