splitting a string into 2 new strings

[P at draigBrady.com]

Mark Light wrote:
> Hi,
>       I have a string e.g. 'C6 H12 O6' that I wish to split up to give 2
> strings
> 'C H O' and '6 12 6'.  I have played with string.split() and the re module -
> but can't quite get there.
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.

import re

molecule_re = re.compile("(.+?)([0-9]+)")
def processMolecule(molecule):
     elements=[]
     numbers=[]

     for item in molecule.split():
         element, number = molecule_re.findall(item)[0]
         elements.append(element)
         numbers.append(number)

     elements = ' '.join(elements)
     numbers = ' '.join(numbers)

     return (elements, numbers)

print processMolecule('C6 H12 O6')