[Python-Dev] Bug 911080, string split oddness (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Sun Mar 7 19:03:53 EST 2004

Jeff Epler <jepler at unpythonic.net>:

I think the current version documentation intends to explain the no-argument form with this sentence: If sep is not specified or None, any whitespace string is a separator. [http://python.org/doc/current/lib/string-methods.html#l2h-197]

I'm inclined to agree with Pete Shinners that the above explanation is perhaps a little too compressed.

Maybe "any string of consecutive whitespace characters is a separator". Perhaps with an explicit note that this is NOT equivalent to .split(" \t\n") and the reason why.

Pete Shinners <pete at shinners.org>:

I suppose split either needs another optional argument or a different split method. (splitgroup? splitseq?)

splitany? (splits on "any" of the chars in the arg)

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+

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