Inconsistent behavior of split on empty string

[bk_kl@gmx.de]

Hi,

I think the following behavior of the build in function 'split' is inconsistent.
What do you think?
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> "".split()[/color][/color][/color]
[][color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> "".split("; ")[/color][/color][/color]
['']

I'm using python 2.3.3 on Windows 2000.
(Perl's split only returns all items up to the last non-empty item,
e.g. <perl>split /;/, "; ;;;"; gets you ['', ' ']. I find this confusing, too).

[Bengt Richter]

Re: Inconsistent behavior of split on empty string

On 13 Feb 2004 00:46:00 -0800, bk_kl@gmx.de (bk_kl@gmx.de) wrote:
[color=blue]
>Hi,
>
>I think the following behavior of the build in function 'split' is inconsistent.
>What do you think?
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>>> "".split()[/color][/color]
>[][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>> "".split("; ")[/color][/color]
>['']
>
>I'm using python 2.3.3 on Windows 2000.
>(Perl's split only returns all items up to the last non-empty item,
> e.g. <perl>split /;/, "; ;;;"; gets you ['', ' ']. I find this confusing, too).[/color]

..split() is not an information-preserving split. It is a convenient special case
whose function should not be confused with that of .split(somethin g).

The latter would be buggy if you could not successfully do this:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> anystring = ''
>>> somestring = ';'
>>> assert anystring == somestring.join (anystring.spli t(somestring))
>>> anystring == somestring.join (anystring.spli t(somestring))[/color][/color][/color]
True

Unfortunately (other than making a likely bug announce itself),
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> somestring = ''
>>> anystring == somestring.join (anystring.spli t(somestring))[/color][/color][/color]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: empty separator

but otherwise I think it works.

Regards,
Bengt Richter