Question

I have a string:

f = open("file.txt", r)
message = f.read()

print message
>>> "To: email\ntitle: add title here\nDescription: whatever here\n"

I can split the string by doing:

f_email, f_title, f_description, blank = message.split('\n')

But the problem arises when I have the message like this:

"To: email\ntitle: add title here\nDescription: first line\nSecond line\nthirdline\n"

When I split the string it splits the description as well. I have tried:

f_email, f_title, f_description, blank = message.split('\n',4)

But that obviously returns ValueError because it is splitting more 4 \n’s.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

When you run .split('\n') you return a list. Rather than assign the variables when you split, you can pull them out of the list:

tokens = message.split('\n')
f_email = tokens[0]
f_title = tokens[1]
f_description = tokens[2]

This can be made less fragile by checking the size of the list. If you know it needs at least three elements, you can:

assert(len(tokens)>=3)

Another way to get around this is to wrap the thing up in a try/except block:

tokens = message.split('\n')
try:  
    f_description = tokens[2]
except:
    f_description = None

That way you can handle the case for a shorter list the exact way you like!