The Python Apprentice

Partitioning strings

Another very useful string method is partition() which divides a string into three sections; the part before a separator, the separator itself, and the part after the separator:

>>> "unforgettable".partition('forget')('un', 'forget', 'table')

The partition() method returns a tuple, so this is commonly used in conjunction with tuple unpacking:

>>> departure, separator, arrival = "London:Edinburgh".partition(':')>>> departureLondon>>> arrivalEdinburgh

Often, we're not interested in capturing the separator value, so you might see the underscore variable name used. This is not treated in a special way by the Python language, but there's an unwritten convention that the underscore variable is for unused or dummy values: