Python: split elements of a list

Question

As a follow up to this question: split elements of a list in python

Given the list:

l = ['element1\t0238.94', 'element2\t2.3904', 'element3\t0139847', '']

How do I get everything after the \t?

I tried:

>>> [i.split('\t', 1)[1] for i in t]                                                                                                                           
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: list index out of range

Is it because I have '' at the end? How do I exclude it?

user1899415, can you accept an answer? You have two answers for nearly a year now. — smci, Mar 03 '15 at 11:21

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 17 '14 at 23:40

5

In [175]: l = ['element1\t0238.94', 'element2\t2.3904', 'element3\t0139847', '']

In [176]: [i.partition('\t')[-1] for i in l]
Out[176]: ['0238.94', '2.3904', '0139847', '']

Or, if you only want to consider the elements with a '\t' in them:

In [177]: [i.partition('\t')[-1] for i in l if '\t' in i]
Out[177]: ['0238.94', '2.3904', '0139847']

answered Apr 17 '14 at 23:40

inspectorG4dget

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I beat you to posting the second method (I used `split()`). – smci Apr 17 '14 at 23:43
1

@smci Great job! Where would you like to pick up your prize? – SethMMorton Apr 18 '14 at 01:32

smci · Answer 2 · 2014-04-18T22:35:40.090

Your case is easier, because you can exploit that we throw away everything before the tab:

l = [x.split('\t')[-1] for x in l]
['0238.94', '2.3904', '0139847', '']

Note we used [-1] instead of [1], so we don't blow up with IndexError when we split('', '\t') and only get one group [''] as a result. '-1' means 'the last index', so -1 will be equivalent to 1 when there are 2 split-groups, and 0 when there is only 1.

Python: split elements of a list

2 Answers2