I'm running python 2.4 on a Linux box (Mandrake cooker
10.2).

Since the string functions have been implemented as
method of string instances, there's little use for the
string module (except for constants). However, the
behaviour of the 'split' method is slightly different
from the one in the string module : it does not accept
keyword arguments.

This is annoying because the default separator argument
('any whitespace') cannot be provided manually (at
least I couldn't find a way to do it) and that means
that you can not use the default separator while
specifying a maxsplit argument (if you specify
maxsplit, you need to give a separator manually because
it comes first in the arg list), unless you use
"string.split" (and "import string") syntax.

Examples :
>>> "foo bar\tbaz\nqux".split()
['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'qux']
>>> string.split("foo bar\tbaz\nqux")
['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'qux']
>>> "foo bar\tbaz\nqux".split(" \t\n") # this is ok,
just illustrating that you cannot emulate the default
behaviour if you provide a separator manually
['foo bar\tbaz\nqux']
>>> string.split("foo bar\tbaz\nqux", maxsplit=2) #
what I want to do
['foo', 'bar', 'baz\nqux']
>>> "foo bar\tbaz\nqux".split(maxsplit=2) # what I get
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: split() takes no keyword arguments
>>> "foo bar\tbaz\nqux".split(2) # cannot skip the sep arg
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: expected a character buffer object

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Specifying None as separator gives you (as documented) the
split-on-mulitple-whitespace behaviour. This applies to both
string.split() and the split() string method. So skipping
the separator arg is not needed.

However, I agree to your wish that the string method split()
should accept the "maxsplit" as a keyword argument. It is
more backward compatible to the old string.split() function
that way.

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As Calvin points out, the docs for str.split are clear about
being able to write None to get the default any whitespace
option.

As a for making maxsplit a keyword argument, that might have
been considered many years ago when string methods were
introduced.  At this point, that is ancient history and not
worth mucking-up the API by introducing yet another
inter-version incompatability (works in Py2.5 but not in
Py2.2, 2.3, or 2.4).