The behaviour of "".split("*") is not that strange as the splitpoint always disappear. The re.split() have a nice option to keep the splitpoint which the str.split should have, I think.
One expectation I keep fighting within myself is that I expect "mystring".split('') to return ['m', 'y', 's', 't', 'r', 'i', 'n', 'g']. But I guess it's in line with "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." that it's not so. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list