converting from perl: variable sized unpack

[Joal Heagney]

> >[f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6] = (string.split (line) + 6*[None])[:6]

> My variant is:
> 
> f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = map(lambda x, y: x, string.split(line), 6*[None])

> f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6 = pad(string.split(line), 6, None)

I've noticed that everyone is using string.split. Is there a reason why
we aren't using the .split() function of strings? They work the same way
in all these examples, so I was wondering was this because they aren't
supported in python 1.5?

>>> line = 'Hi, my name is Joal.'
>>> f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6 = map(lambda x,y:x, line.split(),6*[None])
>>> f1
'Hi,'
>>> f6
>>>
-- 
      Joal Heagney is: _____           _____
   /\ _     __   __ _    |     | _  ___  |
  /__\|\  ||   ||__ |\  || |___|/_\|___] |
 /    \ \_||__ ||___| \_|! |   |   \   \ !