Question: I have a sequence of numbers that I somehow obtain from an external source, not separated by any commas and not in a data structure, e.g: 1 1.5 120202.4343 58 -2442.5 

Where distinct numbers are separated by a space(s). 

Is there a way for me to write a program to quickly convert this sequence into a list or numpy array [1, 1.5, 120202.4343, 58 ,-2442.5].

Answer: 
I'm not sure what you mean by "not in a data structure", that doesn't make much sense. But assuming you have a string, then `numpy` even provides a utility method for this:

```
>>> import numpy as np
>>> data = '1 1.5 120202.4343 58 -2442.5'
>>> np.fromstring(data, sep=' ')
array([ 1.00000000e+00,  1.50000000e+00,  1.20202434e+05,  5.80000000e+01,
       -2.44250000e+03])

```
Like the other answers say using split() can be used for this problem once you get the data as a string. I feel like it is valuable to show that 

```
with open(filename,'r') as fil:
  f = fil.read().split()

```

will let you put your external source file in a variable *filename* and then split that data into a list saved as f.