Fixed length lists from .split()?

[Steven Bethard]

On Jan 26, 11:07 am, Bob Greschke <b... at passcal.nmt.edu> wrote:
> I'm reading a file that has lines like
>
>     bcsn; 1000000; 1223
>     bcsn; 1000001; 1456
>     bcsn; 1000003
>     bcsn; 1000010; 4567
>
> The problem is the line with only the one semi-colon.
> Is there a fancy way to get Parts=Line.split(";") to make Parts always
> have three items in it

In Python 2.5 you can use the .partition() method which always returns 
a three item tuple:

>>> text = '''\
...     bcsn; 1000000; 1223
...     bcsn; 1000001; 1456
...     bcsn; 1000003
...     bcsn; 1000010; 4567
... '''
>>> for line in text.splitlines():
...     bcsn, _, rest = line.partition(';')
...     num1, _, num2 = rest.partition(';')
...     print (bcsn, num1, num2)
...
('    bcsn', ' 1000000', ' 1223')
('    bcsn', ' 1000001', ' 1456')
('    bcsn', ' 1000003', '')
('    bcsn', ' 1000010', ' 4567')
>>> help(str.partition)
Help on method_descriptor:

partition(...)
    S.partition(sep) -> (head, sep, tail)

    Searches for the separator sep in S, and returns the part before 
it,
    the separator itself, and the part after it.  If the separator is 
not
    found, returns S and two empty strings.


STeVe