On 17 June, 21:03, Neil Cerutti <ne...@norwich.edu> wrote: > On 2010-06-17, Robert Kern <robert.k...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 6/17/10 2:08 PM, Neil Cerutti wrote: > >> On 2010-06-17, Ian Kelly<ian.g.ke...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Neil Cerutti > >>> <ne...@norwich.edu> wrote: > >>>> What's the best way to do the inverse operation of the .join > >>>> function? > > >>> Use the str.split method? > > >> split is perfect except for what happens with an empty string. > > > Why don't you try it and find out? > > I'm currently using the following without problems, while reading > a data file. One of the fields is a comma separated list, and may > be empty. > > f = rec['codes'] > if f == "": > f = [] > else: > f = f.split(",") > > I just wondered if something smoother was available. > > -- > Neil Cerutti
In terms of behaviour and 'safety', I'd go for: >>> rec = { 'code1': '1,2,3', 'code2': '' } >>> next(csv.reader([rec['code1']])) ['1', '2', '3'] >>> next(csv.reader([rec['code2']])) [] hth Jon. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list