[Tutor] parsing woes

[Vicki Stanfield]

Okay, I didn't get an answer to this last time, so let me restate it and
try again. I am attempting to parse a string which is in the form:

1 F 5

I need to make parameter[0]= 1, parameter[1] = F, and parameter[2] = 5.
The difficulty is that there might be no parameters or any number up to 3.
They won't always be a single digit or letter but they will always be
space-delimited. My problem is that when I try to display them, I get an
error if there are not 3 parameters.

    if parameters[2]:
IndexError: list index out of range

when I try to run this code to see what the values are:
    if parameters[0]:
         print parameters[0]
    if parameters[1]:
         print parameters[1]
    if parameters[2]:
         print parameters[2]

I am parsing them this way:

if arguments:
    parameters=arguments.split(" ")
else: parameters = ""


Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? I just want the if
parameters[2] to be bypassed if there isn't a third parameter.

--vicki