chopping a string

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting David Bear (iddwb at moroni.pp.asu.edu):
> there's gotta be an easier way.  I have a string 
> "    something  somethingelse    "
> 
> 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])
> 
> but I'm thinking, there must be a better way?  better means (faster) (smaller)..

That's probably what I would use, though if you're in a python that
supports string methods, you could do:

    str.strip().split()[0] or "".join(str.strip().split()[:1])

The latter registers as about 1.33 times faster than (takes 3/4 as
long as) the version above; the former is 2 times faster (runs in 1/2
the time).

You could maybe do with something with re:
    
    string.join(re.split("\s+",str)[:2])

But that won't work if you don't have leading whitespace, and it's
slower, if a bit more concise. My timings show 2500 iterations of this
at .14 seconds, while the method-based version clocks .06 and your
original at .08.

Thanks,
--G.

-- 
Geoff Gerrietts <ggerrietts at yahoo.com>
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