Splitting Space Separated Numbers into Integers

Given a string of space-separated numbers, such as "42 0" in the example, the task is to convert these numbers into a list of integers.

Using str.split()

One approach is to use Python's built-in str.split() method. This method splits the string into a list of substrings, using spaces as the separator. By default, str.split() splits on all whitespace, including spaces, tabs, and newlines.

>>> "42 0".split()  # or .split(" ")
['42', '0']

Note that using str.split(" ") would produce the same result in this case, but may behave differently if there are multiple consecutive spaces in the string.

Using map() for Conversion

To convert the substrings into integers, you can use the map() function. This function takes two arguments: a callable (such as int) and an iterable (such as the list of substrings). It applies the callable to each element in the iterable and returns a new iterable containing the results.

In Python 2:

>>> map(int, "42 0".split())
[42, 0]

In Python 3, map() returns a lazy object that must be converted to a list using the list() function:

>>> map(int, "42 0".split())