[Python-ideas] str.split with padding

[Lie Ryan]

And Clover wrote:
> Here's a simple one I've reinvented in my own apps often enough that it 
> might be worth adding to the built-in split() method:
> 
>     s.split(sep[, maxsplit[, pad]])
> 
> pad, if set True, would pad out the returned list with empty strings 
> (strs/unicodes depending on returned datatype) so that the list was 
> always (maxsplit+1) elements long. This allows one to do things like 
> unpacking assignments:
> 
>     user, hostname= address.split('@', 1, True)
> 
> without having to worry about exceptions when the number of ‘sep’s in 
> the string is unexpectedly fewer than ‘maxsplit’.
> 

Can you find a better use case? For splitting email address, I think I 
would want to know if the address turned out to be invalid (e.g. it does 
not contain exactly 1 @s)