Missing values in tuple assignment

[MRAB]

Albert Hopkins wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 11:57 -0500, Jim Garrison wrote:
>> Use case: parsing a simple config file line where lines start with a
>> keyword and have optional arguments.  I want to extract the keyword and
>> then pass the rest of the line to a function to process it. An obvious
>> use of split(None,1)
>>
>>      cmd,args= = line.split(None,1);
>>      if cmd in self.switch: self.switch[cmd](self,args)
>>      else: self.errors.append("unrecognized keyword '{0)'".format(cmd))
>>
>> Here's a test in IDLE:
>>
>>   >>> a="now is the time"
>>   >>> x,y=a.split(None,1)
>>   >>> x
>>   'now'
>>   >>> y
>>   'is the time'
>>
>> However, if the optional argument string is missing:
>>
>>   >>> a="now"
>>   >>> x,y=a.split(None,1)
>>   Traceback (most recent call last):
>>     File "<pyshell#42>", line 1, in <module>
>>       x,y=a.split(None,1)
>>   ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack
>>
>> I understand the problem is not with split() but with the assignment
>> to a tuple.  Is there a way to get the assignment to default the
>> missing values to None?
> 
> why not do this?
>         >>> a= 'now'
>         >>> z = a.split(None, 1)
>         >>> x = z[0]
>         >>> y = z[1] if len(z) == 2 else None
> 
A 1-line solution (not necessarily recommended) is:

     x, y = (a.split(None, 1) + [None])[ : 2]