Multiline Input into Python Arrays I've knocked together a few lines of python to read in stats for a service (haproxy), and store them in an array (to do some analysis on later). It basically takes a multiline output, and splits it into multiple subarrays. This is how I've done it - can anyone offer improvements for me?

def build_array():
        services=[]
        for line in data.split('\n'):           # split out each line of raw input
                holding=[]                      # start a temp array
                for var in line.split(','):     # for each value append it to the temp array
                        holding.append(var)
                services.append(holding)        # append the temp array to the services array
        return services


The raw data is in the format:

data="""web,FRONTEND,,,0,0,4096,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,,,OPEN,,,,,,,,,1,2,0,,,,0,0,0,0,,,,0,0,0,0,0,0,,0,0,0,,,
    mysql,FRONTEND,,,0,0,4096,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,,,OPEN,,,,,,,,,1,3,0,,,,0,0,0,0,,,,,,,,,,,0,0,0,,,
    web-https,FRONTEND,,,0,0,4096,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,,,OPEN,,,,,,,,,1,4,0,,,,0,0,0,0,,,,,,,,,,,0,0,0,,,
    web,web2-NEW,0,0,0,0,,0,0,0,,0,,0,0,0,0,UP,1,0,1,0,0,19,0,,1,5,1,,0,,2,0,,0,L4OK,,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,,0,0,
    web,web1-OLD,0,0,0,0,,0,0,0,,0,,0,0,0,0,UP,1,1,0,0,0,19,0,,1,5,2,,0,,2,0,,0,L4OK,,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,,0,0,
    web,BACKEND,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,,0,0,0,0,UP,1,1,1,,0,19,0,,1,5,0,,0,,1,0,,0,,,,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,,,0,0,"""
This looks like CSV. You are probably better off using the python csv module.

            holding=[]                      # start a temp array
            for var in line.split(','):     # for each value append it to the temp array
                    holding.append(var)
            services.append(holding)        # append the temp array to the services arra


Can be written as

services.append( line.split(',') )


line.split() returns a list already, there is no need to copy the elements into another list.