Is $newString now comprised of four empty strings?
No, because you're combining your $empty's using an empty separator, which I fully expect to be weird since you can't tell where the original boundaries were, and as I noted, is already covered in the documentation. The question is about positive-width separators...

In reply to Re^2: split tosses away empty components even with positive width separators? by wrog
in thread split tosses away empty components even with positive width separators? by wrog

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