Simple code and suggestion

[g thakuri]

Dear Python friends,

I have a simple question , need your suggestion the same

I would want to avoid using multiple split in the below code , what options
do we have before tokenising the line?, may be validate the first line any
other ideas

 cmd = 'utility   %s' % (file)
 out, err, exitcode = command_runner(cmd)
 data = stdout.strip().split('\n')[0].split()[5][:-2]

Love,
PT