chopping a string

[Carel Fellinger]

David Bear <iddwb at moroni.pp.asu.edu> wrote:

> there's gotta be an easier way.  I have a string 
> 

> note the leading a trailing whitespace.  I'd like to grab the first
> word and strip whitespace.  I came up with

>  string.join(string.split(string.strip(str))[:1])

This looks very complicated, maybe you just ment:

   >>> string.split("    something  somethingelse    ", maxsplit=1)[0]
   'something'

To get the same effect with string methods be ware that you'll have to
specify None as seperator to get the special space treatment:

   >>> "    something  somethingelse    ".split(None, maxsplit=1)[0]
   'something'

The maxsplit=1 is there to speed things up, it stops after the first split.





-- 
groetjes, carel