split() and string.whitespace

[bearophileHUGS at lycos.com]

MRAB:
> It's interesting, if you think about it, that here we have someone who
> wants to split on a set of characters but 'split' splits on a string,
> and others sometimes want to strip off a string but 'strip' strips on
> a set of characters (passed as a string).

That can be seen as a little inconsistency in the language. But with
some practice you learn it.


> You could imagine that if
> Python had had (character) sets from the start then 'split' and
> 'strip' could have accepted a string or a set depending on whether you
> wanted to split on or stripping off a string or a set.

Too bad you haven't suggested this when they were designing Python
3 :-)
This may be suggested for Python 3.1.

Bye,
bearophile