[Python-ideas] [...].join(sep)

[Boris Borcic]

Terry Reedy wrote:
> On 5/21/2012 10:27 AM, Boris Borcic wrote:
>> anatoly techtonik wrote:
>>> I am certain this was proposed many times, but still - why it is
>>> rejected?
>>>
>>> "real man don't use spaces".split().join('+').upper()
>>> instead of
>>> '+'.join("real man don't use spaces".split()).upper()
>>
>> IMO this should really be :
>>
>> '+'.join(' '.split("real man don't use spaces")).upper()
>
> It the separator were a mandatory argument for .split, then that would be
> possible, not not with it being optional, and therefore the second argument.
>
>  >>> ' real men usE SPAces and tabs'.split()
> ['real', 'men', 'usE', 'SPAces', 'and', 'tabs']
>  >>> ' real men usE SPAces and tabs'.split(' ')
> ['', 'real', '', 'men', '', 'usE', 'SPAces', '', '', 'and', '\t', 'tabs']
>
>  >>> ' '.join(' real men usE SPAces and tabs'.split())
> 'real men usE SPAces and tabs'
>
> is a handy way to clean up whitespace
>

Kind of beside the point, which is that the desire to repair the inconsistency 
between split and join has a better prospect at the split side of things than at 
the join side of things. The problems at the split side of things are 
comparatively minor.