what you wrote is the most readable to me: just asign the first 2 element to t, l respectively and forget about the rest. I assume that is what you want. I think perl may do it this way.
A solution which I think looks uglier is : t, l = s.split('|')[:2] Randy Bush wrote: > >>> l = [] > >>> s = 'a|b' > >>> t, l = s.split('|') > >>> t > 'a' > >>> l > 'b' > >>> s = 'a|b|c|d' > >>> t, l = s.split('|') > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? > ValueError: too many values to unpack > >>> > > so, i imagine what is happening is the lhs, t,l, is really > (t, (l)), i.e. only two items. > > so how should i have done this readably and simply? > > randy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list