[erlang-questions] Binary:split and re:split woes

[Robert Virding]

These two functions allow you give a pattern to split binaries (and lists in re) into a list of sub binaries. If the split pattern occurs at the beginning or end of the binary then you get empty parts at the beginning or end. So:

binary:split(<<" abc def ghi ">>, <<" ">>, [global]) ==>
    [<<>>,<<"abc">>,<<"def">>,<<"ghi">>,<<>>]

This is fine and logical. Often you don't want these empty parts so there is a 'trim' options which removes them. But it only trims at the end and not at the beginning. So:

binary:split(<<" abc def ghi ">>, <<" ">>, [global,trim]) ==>
    [<<>>,<<"abc">>,<<"def">>,<<"ghi">>]

This is stupid! Saying it it done like this Perl is hardly a good excuse for bad behaviour.

Sigh,
Robert