Split and take n words from the end

Question

How would you take the last n end words from a split line? For example I have these lines:

1. 123.by2.gateway.edge.messenger.live.com
2. messenger.com
3. 10.17.123.45
4. 126.by2.gateway.edge.messenger.live.com
5. 14.messenger.live.com

I want to take the 3 last words from the addresses so that for lines 1, 4 & 5 I have 'messenger.live.com' and lines 2 & 3 remain intact. This is what I have done to achieve it, but seems to be lame:

link = line.split('.') 
if len(link) > 4: # to bypass the IP address
    plink = link[-1:-3] ?

Answer 1

You want to take

plink = link[-3:]

To ignore the numeric IP you can use this:

link = line.split('.')
if len(link) > 3 and link[-1].isalpha():
    plink = link[-3:]

This will ignore 2. and 3., while proceeding the 5. correctly (as SilentGhost correctly noted, your code ignores the 5.)