How to split a string into a list?

Question

I want my Python function to split a sentence (input) and store each word in a list. My current code splits the sentence, but does not store the words as a list. How do I do

Answer 1

shlex has a .split() function. It differs from str.split() in that it does not preserve quotes and treats a quoted phrase as a single word:

>>> import shlex
>>> shlex.split("sudo echo 'foo && bar'")
['sudo', 'echo', 'foo && bar']