>>> teststr = "a v w ef sdv wef" >>> print teststr a v w ef sdv wef >>> teststr.split() ['a', 'v', 'w', 'ef', 'sdv', 'wef'] >>> teststr.split(" ") ['a', '', '', 'v', 'w', '', '', 'ef', 'sdv', '', '', ' ', '', '', 'wef']