Currently, setting maxsplit for the default "any whitespace" behaviour requires the following cryptic incantation:

    'do re mi fa'.split(None, 1)

That would be significantly more comprehensible as:

    'do re mi fa'.split(maxsplit=1)

(I noticed this when trying to figure out why http://hyperpolyglot.org/scripting#split-notes resorted to using the re module to achieve this)

+1
Patch attached.

New patch that changes .rsplit() too and updates docs and docstrings.

LGTM.

(Nick: I think the author directly translated the regex function calls from other languages to using re in Python.)

Ezio: I spotted an extraneous '[' hanging around in the updated doc signature for split, but otherwise looked fine.

Éric: you're probably right, but I was sending them a note to suggest a simpler alternative, only to discover that the obvious approach of "maxsplit=1" didn't actually work.

New changeset db968ac2b82c by Ezio Melotti in branch 'default':
#14081: The sep and maxsplit parameter to str.split, bytes.split, and bytearray.split may now be passed as keyword arguments.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/db968ac2b82c

Fixed!
Thanks for the reviews and for spotting the extra '['.
(While suggesting the use of maxsplit, be aware that str.split uses -1 as default value, whereas re.split uses 0.)