How to read space separated file in python?

[Steve Holden]

Joe Strout wrote:
> On Nov 21, 2008, at 2:08 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
>>    a, b = line.split()
> 
> Note that in a case like this, you may want to consider using partition
> instead of split:
> 
>   a, sep, b = line.partition(' ')
> 
> This way, if there happens to be more than one space (for example,
> because the Unicode character you're mapping to happens to be a space),
> it'll still work.  It also better encodes the intention, which is to
> split only on the first space in the line, rather than on every space.
> 
> (It so happens I ran into exactly this issue yesterday, though my
> delimiter was a colon.)
> 
Joe:

In the special case of the None first argument (the default for the
str.split() method) runs of whitespace *are* treated as single
delimiters. So line.split() is not the same as line.split(' ').

regards
 Steve
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