title: Python lists and operators
body: <p>From Learn Python the Hard Way:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Python sees you mentioned mystuff and looks up that variable. It might have to look backwards to see if you created with =, look and see if it is a function argument, or maybe it's a global variable. Either way it has to find the mystuff first.</p>
    
    <p>Once it finds mystuff it then hits the . (period) operator and starts
    to look at variables that are a part of mystuff. Since mystuff is a
    list, it knows that mystuff has a bunch of functions.</p>
    
    <p>It then hits append and compares the name "append" to all the ones
    that mystuff says it owns. If append is in there (it is) then it grabs
    that to use. Next Python sees the ( (parenthesis) and realizes, "Oh
    hey, this should be a function." At this point it calls (aka runs,
    executes) the function just like normally, but instead it calls the
    function with an extra argument.</p>
    
    <p>That extra argument is ... mystuff! I know, weird right? But that's
    how Python works so it's best to just remember it and assume that's
    alright. What happens then, at the end of all this is a function call
    that looks like: append(mystuff, 'hello') instead of what you read
    which is mystuff.append('hello').</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Where does he get "mystuff" from? And I'm still unsure about how that period operator thing works (sorry I'm new at this please bear with me), later on we get this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ten_things = "Apples Oranges Crows Telephone Light Sugar"
  
  print "Wait there's not 10 things in that list, let's fix that."
  
  stuff = ten_things.split(' ')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I don't see how that string becomes a list after the last line, does the .split automatically turn it into one or what? What is the name of that period "split" or "append" thing he's doing? One of the main things screwing me up in programming is that I don't know what a lot of things are actually called. I know functions, variables, etc but some stuff like that .split just confuse me.</p>
  
  <p>Help?</p>