Split by, split on

[Tyrn]

Yes, I meant computer science all along

So, we split strings on/at spaces, and into substrings. Still unclear: is it possible to split a string by words? I'm really interested in a short preposition.

[wrholt]

Escrito originalmente por Tyrn

Yes, I meant computer science all along

So, we split strings on/at spaces, and into substrings. Still unclear: is it possible to split a string by words? I'm really interested in a short preposition.

"Split a string by words" doesn't sound as natural to me as "split a string into words".

"Split a string into words" describes the end result of splitting a string. "Split a string by words" suggests the method of splitting a string into smaller units, rather than identifying what the smaller units are. In this context, "by words" doesn't fit the context well, while "into words" does.

There are other types of data for which I could use "by" to describe how to group the data into smaller sets: for example, an economic analysis could report economic data grouped by some unit of time such as year, month, quarter, or week. Or it could report the data by cateory: medical spending, basic necessities such as food, clothing, or housing, and so on.

Note that I'm a native speaker of US English from the northeastern US. I cannot speak for other national, regional, or social varieties of English: there are differences of pronoun usage between different varieties of English.

[Tyrn]

Possible albeit debatable. One can settle for it, then. Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper is a book I can recommend for everyone .

[wrholt]

Escrito originalmente por wrholt

...

Note that I'm a native speaker of US English from the northeastern US. I cannot speak for other national, regional, or social varieties of English: there are differences of pronoun usage between different varieties of English.

My proofreading wasn't that great when I stopped working on a previous reply: I meant to say "differences of preposition usage". That's what I get for writing responses after staying up longer than I probably should.