diff --git a/libnm-core/nm-utils-private.h b/libnm-core/nm-utils-private.h
index ae78d9627..be9619dbf 100644
--- a/libnm-core/nm-utils-private.h
+++ b/libnm-core/nm-utils-private.h
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
  * Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
  * Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
  *
- * Copyright 2005 - 2008 Red Hat, Inc.
+ * Copyright 2005 - 2014 Red Hat, Inc.
  */
 
 #ifndef __NM_UTILS_PRIVATE_H__
@@ -78,4 +78,8 @@ void        _nm_utils_ip6_routes_from_dbus    (const GValue *dbus_value,
 GSList *    _nm_utils_strv_to_slist (char **strv);
 char **     _nm_utils_slist_to_strv (GSList *slist);
 
+char **     _nm_utils_strsplit_set (const char *str,
+                                    const char *delimiters,
+                                    int max_tokens);
+
 #endif
diff --git a/libnm-core/nm-utils.c b/libnm-core/nm-utils.c
index 591b1e1d5..58e1d20e4 100644
--- a/libnm-core/nm-utils.c
+++ b/libnm-core/nm-utils.c
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
  * Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
  * Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
  *
- * Copyright 2005 - 2013 Red Hat, Inc.
+ * Copyright 2005 - 2014 Red Hat, Inc.
  */
 
 #include "config.h"
@@ -706,6 +706,41 @@ _nm_utils_slist_to_strv (GSList *slist)
 	return strv;
 }
 
+/**
+ * _nm_utils_strsplit_set:
+ * @str: string to split
+ * @delimiters: string of delimiter characters
+ * @max_tokens: the maximum number of tokens to split string into. When it is
+ * less than 1, the @str is split completely.
+ *
+ * Utility function for splitting string into a string array. It is a wrapper
+ * for g_strsplit_set(), but it also removes empty strings from the vector as
+ * they are not useful in most cases.
+ *
+ * Returns: (transfer full): a newly allocated NULL-terminated array of strings.
+ * The caller must free the returned array with g_strfreev().
+ **/
+char **
+_nm_utils_strsplit_set (const char *str, const char *delimiters, int max_tokens)
+{
+	char **result;
+	uint i;
+	uint j;
+
+	result = g_strsplit_set (str, delimiters, max_tokens);
+
+	/* remove empty strings */
+	for (i = 0; result && result[i]; i++) {
+		if (*result[i] == '\0') {
+			g_free (result[i]);
+			for (j = i; result[j]; j++)
+				result[j] = result[j + 1];
+			i--;
+		}
+	}
+	return result;
+}
+
 static gboolean
 device_supports_ap_ciphers (guint32 dev_caps,
                             guint32 ap_flags,