title: "Greedy" split method as default?
body: <p>When no argument is passed into the string split method, it will break the string every time it finds a space character and create a list, right? Even though your string has many space characters in a row it will do the right job anyways.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; "this is     a         test".split()
  ['this', 'is', 'a', 'test']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, if I specify the argument as the space character, the interpreter gives me this as result.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; "this is     a         test".split(' ')
  ['this', 'is', '', '', '', '', 'a', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', 'test']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I apologize if my analogy is not too accurate but it seems the method behaves sort of a greedy regex when no argument is passed, i.e. it always finds the longest instance and use it to break the string. On the other hand, if you pass the delimiter the method finds the shortest and considers the rest empty strings when building the list.</p>
  
  <p>Why this behaviour? Is there a way to force <em>.split(' ')</em> to act like <em>.split()</em>? </p>