Note that in some circumstances the <<.op splitregexp>> operator will include blank items in the list of results. For example,
```
[[the band thethe are the best the]splitregexp[the]]
```
The following results are returned:
```
["", " band ", "", " are ", " best ", ""]
```
Where it might be expected that the results would be:
```
[" band ", " are ", " best "]
```
The blank items mark the boundaries between matches. If they are not required they can be removed with the ''blank'' category of the [[is Operator]]: `[[the band thethe are the best the]splitregexp[the]!is[blank]]`.
The reason that the blank items can be useful is that they allow search and replace operations to be constructed from a combination of the [[split Operator]] or [[splitregexp Operator]] and the [[join Operator]]. For example:
<<.operator-example 1 "[[nobody, really; wants; to see -- all this \punctuation]splitregexp[,|;|-|\\]join[...]]">>
Syntax errors in the regular expression will cause the filter to return an error message. For example:
<<.operator-example 2 "[[the cat sat on the mat]splitregexp[\]]">>