title: Python: first character when splitting
body: <p>I just noticed the <code>split</code> method produces an empty string in the result list if the first character is a delimiter string.</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; s = '/foo/bar/blarg'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s.split('/')
  ['', 'foo', 'bar', 'blarg']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I expected this to produce:</p>
  
  <pre><code>['foo', 'bar', 'blarg']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there some reason why this is desirable behavior, or is this simply a bug?</p>