sscanf in Python

When I'm in a C mood, I usually use zip and list comprehensions for scanf-like behavior. Like this:

input = '1 3.0 false hello'
(a, b, c, d) = [t(s) for t,s in zip((int,float,strtobool,str),input.split())]
print (a, b, c, d)

Note that for more complex format strings, you do need to use regular expressions:

import re
input = '1:3.0 false,hello'
(a, b, c, d) = [t(s) for t,s in zip((int,float,strtobool,str),re.search('^(\d+):([\d.]+) (\w+),(\w+)$',input).groups())]
print (a, b, c, d)

Note also that you need conversion functions for all types you want to convert. For example, above I used something like:

strtobool = lambda s: {'true': True, 'false': False}[s]

There is also the parse module.

parse() is designed to be the opposite of format() (the newer string formatting function in Python 2.6 and higher).

>>> from parse import parse
>>> parse('{} fish', '1')
>>> parse('{} fish', '1 fish')
<Result ('1',) {}>
>>> parse('{} fish', '2 fish')
<Result ('2',) {}>
>>> parse('{} fish', 'red fish')
<Result ('red',) {}>
>>> parse('{} fish', 'blue fish')
<Result ('blue',) {}>