how best to split into singleton and sequence

[Randy Bush]

>>> l = []

s = 'a|b'
t, l = s.split('|')
t 'a' l 'b' s = 'a|b|c|d'
t, l = s.split('|') Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: too many values to unpack

so, i imagine what is happening is the lhs, t,l, is really
(t, (l)), i.e. only two items.

so how should i have done this readably and simply?

randy

[George Sakkis]

"Randy Bush" <ra***@psg.com> wrote:

l = []
s = 'a|b'
t, l = s.split('|')
t 'a' l 'b' s = 'a|b|c|d'
t, l = s.split('|') Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: too many values to unpack
so, i imagine what is happening is the lhs, t,l, is really
(t, (l)), i.e. only two items.

so how should i have done this readably and simply?

s = 'a|b|c|d'
l = s.split('|')
t = l.pop(0)

By the way, don't use 'l' as an identifier; it is very close to '1' visually.

George

[Erik Max Francis]

Randy Bush wrote:

so, i imagine what is happening is the lhs, t,l, is really
(t, (l)), i.e. only two items.

so how should i have done this readably and simply?

Your question isn't at all clear. You're trying to assign a 4-element
tuple to two elements. That generates a ValueError.

Did you want to only split once at most? Then it's s.split('|', 1).
Did you want to assign the first element to the first variable and the
rest to the next? Then it's x = s.split('|'); a, b = x[0], x[1:].

--
Erik Max Francis && ma*@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
It's funny when you think about it / How coincidence rules
-- Anggun

[bonono]

what you wrote is the most readable to me:

just asign the first 2 element to t, l respectively and forget about
the rest. I assume that is what you want. I think perl may do it this
way.

A solution which I think looks uglier is :

t, l = s.split('|')[:2]

Randy Bush wrote:

l = []
s = 'a|b'
t, l = s.split('|')
t 'a' l 'b' s = 'a|b|c|d'
t, l = s.split('|') Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: too many values to unpack

so, i imagine what is happening is the lhs, t,l, is really
(t, (l)), i.e. only two items.

so how should i have done this readably and simply?

randy