How do I reliably split a string in Python, when it may not contain the pattern, or all n elements?

Question

In Perl I can do:

my ($x, $y) = split /:/, $str;

And it will work whether or not the string contains the pattern.

In Python, howeve

Answer 1

split will always return a list. a, b = ... will always expect list length to be two. You can use something like l = string.split(':'); a = l[0]; ....

Here is a one liner: a, b = (string.split(':') + [None]*2)[:2]