Split filenames with python

How about using the proper path handling methods from os.path?

>>> f = 'C:\\X\\Data\\foo.txt'
>>> import os
>>> os.path.basename(f)
'foo.txt'
>>> os.path.dirname(f)
'C:\\X\\Data'
>>> os.path.splitext(f)
('C:\\X\\Data\\foo', '.txt')
>>> os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(f))
('foo', '.txt')

To deal with path and file names, it is best to use the built-in module os.path in Python. Please look at function dirname, basename and split in that module.