[Python-ideas] str.split with empty separator (original) (raw)

MRAB python at mrabarnett.plus.com
Thu Jul 29 18:28:46 CEST 2010

Alexandre Conrad wrote:

Hello all,

What if str.split could take an empty separator?

'banana'.split('') ['b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a'] I know this can be done with: list('banana') ['b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a'] I think that, semantically speaking, it would make sens to split where there are no characters (in between them). Right now you can join from an empty string: ''.join(['b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a']) So why can't we split from an empty string? This wouldn't introduce any backwards incompatible changes as str.split currently can't have an empty separator: 'banana'.split('') Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in ValueError: empty separator I would love to see my banana actually split. :) Shouldn't it be this:

'banana'.split('') ['', 'b', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a', '']

After all, the separator does exist at the start and end of the string:

'banana'.startswith('') True 'banana'.endswith('') True

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