str.split() with empty separator

Tue Sep 15 09:33:51 EDT 2009

2009年9月15日 Ulrich Eckhardt <eckhardt at satorlaser.com>:
> Hi!
>> "'abc'.split('')" gives me a "ValueError: empty separator".
> However, "''.join(['a', 'b', 'c'])" gives me "'abc'".
>> Why this asymmetry? I was under the impression that the two would be
> complementary.
>> Uli
>
maybe it isn't quite obvious, what the behaviour in this case should be;
re.split also works with empty delimiter (and returns the original string)
>>> re.split("", "abcde")
['abcde']
If you need to split the string into the list of single characters
like in your example, list() is the possible way:
>>> list("abcde")
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
>>>
vbr