I’m having trouble splitting a text file using empty line \n\n delimiters. re.split(\n, aString)

Question

Asked: June 2, 20262026-06-02T21:05:02+00:00 2026-06-02T21:05:02+00:00

I’m having trouble splitting a text file using empty line "\n\n" delimiters.

re.split("\n", aString)

works but

re.split("\n\n", aString)

just returns the whole string.

Any ideas?

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-06-02T21:05:03+00:00

You are probably failing because the double newline you are looking for is in a Windows-encoded text file, and will appear as \r\n\r\n, not \n\n.

The repr() function will tell you for sure what your line endings are:

>>> mystring = #[[a line of your file]]
>>> repr(mystring)
"'\\nmulti\\nline\\nstring '"

Are you sure that you don’t just want to read the file line by line in the first place?

with open(file.txt, 'r') as f:
    for line in f:
        print (line)

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