Odd list behavior

[Evan Kroske]

I'm working on a simple file processing utility, and I encountered a 
weird error. If I try to get the first element of a list I'm splitting 
from a string, I get an error:

key = string.split()[0]
Error!

However, I can slice the list like normal, but that gives me a 
one-element-long list:

key = string.split()[:1]
Success!

Finally, the operation works perfectly if I initialize the list beforehand:

list = string.split()
key = list[0]
Success!

Why does this happen?
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Evan Kroske
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