How to simply read in input from stdin delimited by space or spaces

Question

Hello I'm a trying to learn python, In C++ to read in string from stdin I simply do

string str;
while (cin>>str)
    do_something(str)

but in python, I have to use

line = raw_input()

then

x = line.split()

then I have to loop through the list x to access each str to do_something(str)

this seems like a lot of code just to get each string delimited by space or spaces so my question is, is there a easier way?

Answer 1

Python doesn't special-case such a specific form of input for you, but it's trivial to make a little generator for it of course:

def fromcin(prompt=None):
  while True:
    try: line = raw_input(prompt)
    except EOFError: break
    for w in line.split(): yield w

and then, in your application code, you loop with a for statement (usually the best way to loop at application-code level):

for w in fromcin():
  dosomething(w)

Answer 2

There isn't really an "easier" way, since Python doesn't have built-in formatted string functions like C++ does with iostream.

That said, you could shorten your code by combining the operations:

for str in raw_input().split():
   do_something(str)

Answer 3

map(do_something, line.split())