Splitting lines in a file

[Bryan Olson]

Simon Foster wrote:

| I see it, but I don't see why?  What is the explanation for this?  It
| seems at odds with the documentation.

You are right.  The doc indicates the following should produce the same
output:

 >>> print " hello there ".split()
['hello', 'there']
 >>> print " hello there ".split(" ")
['', 'hello', 'there', '']

It looks like string.split() with no seperator does a string.strip()
first.

If that's not what you want, there's also re.split (with the string and
separator args in the reverse order from string.split).  To get a true
split on whitespace:

 >>> import re
 >>> re.split(r"\s+", " hello \n\n\t there ")
['', 'hello', 'there', '']


--Bryan