grief...read Robert's initial post
>>> import string
>>> a = ' "cat, mouse, dog" ' # a double-quoted string, surrounded with single quotes...or equivalent
>>> b = string.split(a,",")
>>> b # yields a list with a single entry
[' "cat', ' mouse', ' dog" ']
>>> c = "cat, mouse, dog"
>>> d = string.split(c,",") # yields a list with 3 entries
>>> d
['cat', ' mouse', ' dog']
Examine the csv module, it handles these cases quite well.