You can do both: make partition() return a sequence with attributes, similar to os.stat(). However, I would call the attributes "before", "sep", and "after".
Terry> One could see that as a special-case back-compatibility kludge Terry> that maybe should disappear in 3.0.
Back compatibility with what?
os.stat without attributes. 'that' referred to its current 'sequence with attributes' return.
I'm -1 on the notion of generating groups or attributes.
We agree. A back-compatibility kludge is not a precedent to be emulated.
In the case of stat() there is no reason other than historic for the results to be returned in any particular order,
Which is why I wonder whether the sequence part should be dropped in 3.0. Terry J. Reedy