Christoph Wruck added the comment: Hi Steven
exactly - you're right with this. 'spam--eggs--cheese----toast'.split('-', offset=1) --> ['spam', '-eggs', '-cheese', '-', '-toast'] 'spam--eggs--cheese--toast'.split('-', offset=8) --> ['spam', '-eggs--cheese', '-toast'] Okay - the name "offset" might be an unfortunate choice and you are right that this could be hard to understand for a caller. One more examples: The following removes all escape signs to process the octal escape sequences in a second way if the first three characters are digits. 'spam\\055\\\\055-eggs-\\\\rest'.split('\\', offset=1) --> ['spam', '055', '\\055-eggs-', '\\rest'] # could speed up the split built-in func if a caller knows that every chunk is 3 chars long? 'tic-tac-toe'.split('-', offset=3) A caller could use the offset parameter to keep all separators between the last found and offset if it's a part of a chunk. Or if he awaiting a separator followed by itself which should be keeped - in doubt with the same length of separator. ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue22360> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com