Re: Rationale for split-string?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

      So I suppose you want a simpler version of Luc Teirlinck's
    suggestion.  How about:

    ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
    ;;
    ;; one function, three arguments

    (defun split-string (string &optional separators omit-nulls)

      "Splits STRING into substrings bounded by matches for SEPARATORS.

    The beginning and end of STRING, and each match for SEPARATORS, are
    splitting points.  The substrings between the splitting points are
    collected in a list, which is returned.  (The substrings matching
    SEPARATORS are removed.)

    If SEPARATORS is nil, it defaults to \"[ \f\t\n\r\v]+\".

    If OMIT-NULLs is t, zero-length substrings are omitted from the list
    (so that for the default value of SEPARATORS leading and trailing
    whitespace are trimmed).  If nil, all zero-length substrings are
    retained, which correctly parses CSV format, for example."

That seems like the right thing, except I think that if SEPARATORS is
nil, OMIT-NULLS should default to t.