String split in python

Question

In the loop below, content is a list containing an unknown amount of strings. each string contains a name with a set of numbers after the name, each delimited by a space. I am trying to use split to put the name and each score into a variable but I am having trouble because each name has a variable amount of scores. How would I be able to do this without knowing how many scores each name will have?

for i in content:
    name, score1, score2 = i.split()
    print name, score1, score2

Answer 1

You can use slicing for assignment :

for i in content:
   s=i.split()
   name,scores=s[0],s[1:]

At the end you'll have the name in name variable and list of scores in scores.

In python 3 you can use star expressions :

for i in content:
   name,*scores=i.split()