Greg Ewing wrote:
Will McGugan wrote:
Hi,
I'm curious about the behaviour of the str.split() when applied to
empty strings.
"".split() returns an empty list, however..
"".split("*") returns a list containing one empty string.
Both of these make sense as limiting cases.
Consider
>>> "a b c".split()
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> "a b".split()
['a', 'b']
>>> "a".split()
['a']
>>> "".split()
[]
and
>>> "**".split("*")
['', '', '']
>>> "*".split("*")
['', '']
>>> "".split("*")
['']
The split() method is really doing two somewhat different things
depending on whether it is given an argument, and the end-cases
come out differently.
You don't really explain *why* they make sense as limiting cases, as
your examples are quite different.
Consider
>>> "a*b*c".split("*")
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> "a*b".split("*")
['a', 'b']
>>> "a".split("*")
['a']
>>> "".split("*")
['']
Now how is this logical when compared with split() above?
David
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