Question

split has a maxsplit parameter, which is useful when you want at most X results. If there something similar to return at least X results and populate the rest with Nones. I’d like to be able to write

 a, b, c = 'foo,bar'.magic_split(',', 3)

and have a=foo, b=bar and c=None.

Any ideas how to write such a function?

Upd. I ended up with a solution which is a combination of this and this answers:

>>> def just(n, iterable, fill=None):
...     return (list(iterable) + [fill] * n)[:n]
... 
>>> just(3, 'foo,bar'.split(','))
['foo', 'bar', None]

Answer 1

There is no such parameter to str.split(). A hack to achieve this would be

a, b, c = ('foo,bar'.split(',', 2) + [None] * 3)[:3]

Not sure if I recommend this code, though.