bringing up the concept of empty leading fields there at the top

This can still be done without adding another rule to how split works. My suggestion is to attack the problem from a different angle and avoid the conflict by saying something like: "in some special cases expected leading empty fields are deleted; see below". Then we don't say they should be preserved, and the conflict is avoided.

ihb

In reply to Re^6: splitting nothing? by ihb
in thread splitting nothing? by bageler

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