Because of the way webbrowser.UnixBrowser.open generates command-line
arguments the resulting list sometimes looks like this:

  ['chromium', '', 'http://www.example.org/']

This seems to work fine with chromium for me but as you can see:

  >>> subprocess.call(['ls', '', '-l'])
  ls: cannot access : No such file or directory
  2

It's not a good idea to rely on that.
I'm attaching a patch that filters out those empty arguments.

Added tests in #15557.

Better to fix producer of empty lines than filter those ones.
Keep in mind: there are several places there args list generated, probably you fix not all error sources.

Given the logic of webbrowser, I think Anton's patch is correct.  The null strings are produced by the somewhat twisted logic of UnixBrowser.open, and the problem doesn't apply to the other cases of argument list generation.  (In those other cases, getting null strings would indicate a configuration error, which this case is not.)

New changeset 6768aa70c2d3 by R David Murray in branch '3.2':
#15509: If %action substitution produces a null string, drop it.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/6768aa70c2d3

New changeset 323ca2f0e382 by R David Murray in branch 'default':
Merge #15509: If %action substitution produces a null string, drop it.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/323ca2f0e382

New changeset 5da3b2df38b3 by R David Murray in branch 'default':
#15557,#15447,#15509: webbrowser test suite added.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5da3b2df38b3

Thanks, Anton.