How do I split this string up?

Question

...    
    1947q2        -0.6
    1947q3        -0.3
    1947q4         6.2
    1948q1        16.5
...

How do I get this text file into a list? I'm having problems with the spacing between the year and corresponding values.

This is what I have so far:

data = []

for line in open("file"):
    if '1947' in line:
        sl = line.split('       ')
        data.append((sl[0], sl[1]))

print data

Answer 1

Just using split() without arguments splits by whitespace, and eats consecutive whitespace:

>>> s='    1947q2        -0.6'
>>> s.split()
['1947q2', '-0.6']

Answer 2

data = []

with open("file") as fin:
    for line in fin:
        data.append(tuple(line.split()))

print data