[Python-3000] More wishful thinking

[Terry Reedy]

"Talin" <talin at acm.org> wrote in message 
news:loom.20060416T073739-283 at post.gmane.org...
> Unfortunately, if the paragraph only contains a single word,
> this blows up. So what you end up having to do is:
>
>   parts = paragraph.split( ' ', 1 )
>   if len( parts ) > 1:
>      first, rest = parts
>   else:
>      first = parts[ 0 ]
>      rest = ""
>
> My objection here is that the intent of the code is cluttered
> up by the error-handling logic.

So wrap it all up in a function, especially if you need the logic more than 
once.

> If I could do an argument-style unpack, however, I could instead
> write:
>
>   first, *rest = paragraph.split( ' ', 1 )

first, rest = my_para_split(s,1)

tjr