title: why doesn't line.split('\s') do the same as line.split()?
body: <p>I have a very very simple program that parses a csv file that has rows of text records whose columns are separated by a single tab character.</p>
  
  <p>I understand split() by default splits on whitespace so explicitly specifying a whitespace pattern isn't needed, but my question is why won't an explicitly specified pattern for whitespace work?  Or is '\s' or r'\s' not the right pattern/regex?  I searched on stackoverflow and found mentioning of string split() being an older method, which I don't really understand since I am very new to python.  Does string split() not support regex?</p>
  
  <p>Here is my code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#!/usr/bin/env python
  import os
  import re
  import sys
  
  f = open(sys.argv[1])
  for line in f:
      field = line.split()
      field2 = line.split('\s')
      print field[1], field2[1]
  f.close
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried doing line.split(r'\s') and that doesn't work either, but line.split('\t') works.</p>