From: "trans.  (T. Onoma)" <transami@...>
Date: 2004-10-10T13:18:48+09:00
Subject: split with negative limit

Word o' warning. I just put this comment in a program:

  lines = self.split("\n",-1)  # boy oh boy was that -1 a pain to figure out!

All told I probably wasted half of my day trying to figure this out because it 
was causing another part of the program to act oddly (which I still don't 
quite get but nonetheless), thus digusing the real issue.

This is VERY unintuitive. The value itself doesn't even /do/ anything when the 
limit is negative. Moreover, is the default of supressing null fields really 
best? Recommend improvement something like:

  def split( pattern=$; , supres_null=false , limit=nil )

No negative number trick.

Thanks,
T.