Evan Kroske wrote: > I'm working on a simple file processing utility, and I encountered a > weird error. If I try to get the first element of a list I'm splitting > from a string, I get an error: > > key = string.split()[0] > Error!
When string contains only whitespace string.split() returns an empty list an then >>> [][0] Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> IndexError: list index out of range > However, I can slice the list like normal, but that gives me a > one-element-long list: > > key = string.split()[:1] > Success! The slice length may be shorter than specified: >>> [][:1] [] > Finally, the operation works perfectly if I initialize the list > beforehand: > > list = string.split() > key = list[0] > Success! Not with the same string as in your previous examples. Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
