Merge branch 'main' of github.com:bbelderbos/bobcodesit

index.md

@@ -442,6 +442,7 @@ This file gets generated by [this script](index.py).
 - [More performant string building](notes/20231218133029.md)
 - [Removesuffix and removeprefix](notes/20240124191423.md)
 - [See if a string only contains ascii characters](notes/20221216114651.md)
+- [Split's maxspit optional argument](notes/20240620083150.md)
 - [Splitlines](notes/20220907130613.md)
 - [Startswith can receive a tuple](notes/20240130100737.md)
 - [String methods over regular expressions](notes/20220908104354.md)

notes/20240620083150.md

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+# split's maxspit optional argument
+
+`maxsplit` determines the maximum number of splits. This can be handy if the split character appears in the string multiple times. If `maxsplit` is not specified, there is no limit on the number of splits. Example:
+
+```python
+# string with comma (split character) in the one of the fields
+string = "John, [email protected], Message with comma, more text"
+
+# not what you want:
+string.split(", ")  ['John', '[email protected]', 'Message with comma', 'more text']
+
+# cannot rely on number of splits
+name, email, msg = string.split(", ")  # ValueError: not enough values to unpack ...
+
+# what you actually want:
+string.split(", ", maxsplit=2)  # ['John', '[email protected]', 'Message with comma, more text']
+
+# now can properly unpack
+name, email, msg = string.split(", ", maxsplit=2)
+name # 'John'
+email # '[email protected]'
+msg # 'Message with comma, more text'
+```
+
+#strings