>>> s= 'ab;cd|efg|hi,jkl|mn\topq;rst,uvw\txyz'
>>> s.split(';')
['ab', 'cd|efg|hi,jkl|mn\topq', 'rst,uvw\txyz']
>>> c=s.split(';')
>>> map(lambda x:x.split('|'),c)
<map object at 0x03E41690>
>>> t=[]
>>> map(lambda x: t.extend(x.split('|')),c)
SyntaxError: unexpected indent
>>> map(lambda x: t.extend(x.split('|')),c)
<map object at 0x03E41850>
>>> t
>>> import re
>>> re.split(r'[,;\t|]+',s)
['ab', 'cd', 'efg', 'hi', 'jkl', 'mn', 'opq', 'rst', 'uvw', 'xyz']
>>>