Paste Mathematica code so that's it's broken into separate input cells

Question

I often copy Mathematica code from websites (such as SO) to a notebook. The code usually gets pasted as a single input cell. I\'m looking for a simple way to paste it as s

Answer 1

Or.... you can just Hit Ctrl+Shift+D at the point where you'd like to split your singe cell into 2 separate cells. Some times it's advantageous to group multiple operations into a single cell (or rather not split them to begin with). To undo such a split, select both cells (or more than 2 if you'd like) and click Ctrl+Shift+M to merge them into one.

Answer 2

This is a simple implementation (I'd also appreciate a code review, I'm not good in front end programming):

(* This converts a sequence of expressions into boxes *)
Clear[makeManyBoxes]
SetAttributes[makeManyBoxes, HoldAllComplete];
makeManyBoxes[e__] := List@ReleaseHold[MakeBoxes /@ HoldComplete[e]]

(* Split a list at separator *)
split[list_, sep_] := 
 DeleteCases[Split[list, #1 =!= sep && #2 =!= sep &], {sep}] 

wr[e_] := NotebookWrite[InputNotebook[], Cell[BoxData[e], "Input"]]

CreatePalette@Button["Paste!",
  Module[{clipboard},
   clipboard = NotebookGet[ClipboardNotebook[]][[1, 1, 1]];
   If[StringQ[clipboard],

    wr /@ 
     split[ToExpression[clipboard, InputForm, makeManyBoxes], "Null"]
    ]
   ]
  ]

It breaks cells at empty lines. For this, we need to parse the expression first (what if an empty line appears in the middle of a long Module?). But parsing alone will cause several problems.

Problems with this implementation:

• it removes comments
• it can't handle incorrect inputs
• it doesn't preserve the formatting (newlines)
• I'm sure there must be several other things that can go wrong