Python: Split by 1 or more occurrences of a delimiter

Question

Hi,

I have a formatted string from a log file, which looks like:

>>> a="test                            result"

That is, the test and the result are split by some spaces - it was probably created using formatted string which gave test some constant spacing.

Simple splitting won't do the trick:

>>> a.split(" ")
['test', '', '', '', ... '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', 'result']

split(DELIMITER, COUNT) cleared some unnecessary values:

>>> a.split(" ",1)
['test', '                           result']

This helped - but of course, I really need:

['test', 'result']

I can use split() followed by map + strip(), but I wondered if there is a more Pythonic way to do it.

Thanks,

Adam

UPDATE: Such a simple solution! Thank you all.

Answer 1

Just this should work:

a.split()

Example:

>>> 'a      b'.split(' ')
['a', '', '', '', '', '', 'b']
>>> 'a      b'.split()
['a', 'b']

From the documentation:

If sep is not specified or is None, a different splitting algorithm is applied: runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator, and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace. Consequently, splitting an empty string or a string consisting of just whitespace with a None separator returns [].

Answer 2

>>> import re
>>> a="test                            result"
>>> re.split(" +",a)
['test', 'result']

>>> a.split()
['test', 'result']

Answer 3

Any problem with simple a.split()?

Answer 4

Just do not give any delimeter?

>>> a="test                            result"
>>> a.split()
['test', 'result']