[Tutor] Splitting a number into even- and odd- numbered digits

[Carroll, Barry]

Greetings:

I am writing a function that accepts a string of decimal digits, calculates a checksum and returns it as a single character string.  
The first step in the calculation is to split the input into two strings: the even- and odd- numbered digits, respectively.  The least significant digit is defined as odd.  

The following code fragment does the job but seems sort of brutish and inelegant to me:

>>>>>>>
>>> s = '987654321'
>>> odd = ''
>>> for c in s[::-2]:
...     odd = c + odd
...     
>>> s = s[:-1]
>>> even = ''
>>> for c in s[::-2]:
...     even = c + even
...     
>>> odd
'97531'
>>> even
'8642'
>>>>>>>

Is there a better (i.e. more Pythonic) way to do this?  

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Regards,
 
Barry
barry.carroll at psc.com
541-302-1107
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