[Python-ideas] str.split() oddness

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2011 08:06:08 am Mart Sõmermaa wrote:

> Which do you prefer:
>
>   bar = dict(chunk.split('=') for chunk in foo.split(","))
>
> or
>
>   bar = (dict(chunk.split('=') for chunk in foo.split(",")) if foo
> else {})
>
> ?


Which would you prefer?

line = line.split("#")[0].rstrip()
line = line.split("#")[0].rstrip() if line else ""

Whichever behaviour we give split, we're going to complicate something. 
Since there's no overwhelming reason to prefer one use-case over the 
other, the status quo wins. Any change to the behaviour of split will 
break code which is currently working, and that alone is reason enough 
to stick with the current behaviour.

By the way, your dict() examples are not robust against minor whitespace 
changes in foo. Consider what happens with either of:

foo = "x=1, y = 4, z = 2"
foo = "x=1,y=4,z=2,"



-- 
Steven D'Aprano