[Python-Dev] Bug 911080, string split oddness

[Pete Shinners]

I just filed Bug #911080. Sorry if this has been discussed before, at 
minimum I believe there should be a documentation fix.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=911080&group_id=5470&atid=105470


Basically this documents the difference between
     "a b  c".split()
     "a b  c".split(" ")

This is a quirky little change in behavior that I've seen confuse newbies. 
Unfortunately there are needs for both styles of splitting.

In a world where backward breaking changes aren't a big deal, I would think 
split() would always work like the first version, and splitfields() would 
change to work like the second version. But that would break just about 
everything, so I suppose split either needs another optional argument or a 
different split method. (splitgroup? splitseq?)

The only workaround is to use regular expression splitting. But that's not a 
direction I like to point newbies towards too quickly.