Why does split() return more elements than split(“ ”) on same string?

Question

I am using split() and split(\" \") on the same string. But why is split(\" \") returning less number of elements than split()

Answer 1

The method str.split called without arguments has a somewhat different behaviour.

First it splits by any whitespace character.

'foo bar\nbaz\tmeh'.split() # ['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'meh']

But it also remove the empty strings from the output list.

' foo bar '.split(' ') # ['', 'foo', 'bar', '']

' foo bar '.split() # ['foo', 'bar']