What's correct Python syntax?

[emile]

On 01/14/2014 02:05 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:
> On 1/14/2014 3:46 AM, Igor Korot wrote:
>> Hi, ALL,
>> I'm trying to process a file which has following lines:
>>
>> 192.168.1.6 > 192.168.1.7: ICMP echo request, id 100, seq 200, length 30
>
>> However, I don't need all the protocol info. All I'm interested in is
>> the last field, which is length.
>
> To directly extract only the needed info:
>
>  >>> s="192.168.1.6 > 192.168.1.7: ICMP echo request, id 100, seq 200,
> length 30"
>  >>> s[s.rindex(' ')+1:]
> '30'

Any particular reason to prefer that over:

 >>> s.split()[-1]
'30'

Is it a length of s and speed or rindex over build and toss the list 
kind of thing?

Emile