Currently, setting maxsplit for the default "any whitespace" behaviour requires the following cryptic incantation: 'do re mi fa'.split(None, 1) That would be significantly more comprehensible as: 'do re mi fa'.split(maxsplit=1) (I noticed this when trying to figure out why http://hyperpolyglot.org/scripting#split-notes resorted to using the re module to achieve this)
Ezio: I spotted an extraneous '[' hanging around in the updated doc signature for split, but otherwise looked fine. Éric: you're probably right, but I was sending them a note to suggest a simpler alternative, only to discover that the obvious approach of "maxsplit=1" didn't actually work.
Fixed! Thanks for the reviews and for spotting the extra '['. (While suggesting the use of maxsplit, be aware that str.split uses -1 as default value, whereas re.split uses 0.)