"/1/2/3/".split("/")

Question

It's too hot & I'm probably being retarded.

>>> "/1/2/3/".split("/")
['', '1', '2', '3','']

Whats with the empty elements at the start and end?

Edit: Thanks all, im putting this down to heat induced brain failure. The docs aren't quite the clearest though, from http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html

"Return a list of the words in the string, using sep as the delimiter string"

Is there a word before the first, or after the last "/"?

Answer 1

Compare with:

"1/2/3".split("/")

Empty elements are still elements.

You could use strip('/') to trim the delimiter from the beginning/end of your string.