How do I avoid trailing empty items being removed when splitting strings?

Question

I am doing:

\"b::::c:::\".split(\':\')

Result:

[\"b\", \"\", \"\", \"\", \"c\", \"\", \"\"] # expect
[\"b\", \"\", \"\", \"         


        

Answer 1

There's a limit parameter to .split(pattern=$;, [limit]). If limit is omitted, trailing null fields are suppressed. You need to provide a negative limit

"b::::c:::".split(':', -1) 

but bear in mind that this will return three "" values at the end of the array.

result: ["b", "", "", "", "c", "", "", ""]