How to split a list based on a condition and while keeping the split value in the sublist?

Question

Is there a way to split a list into sublists based on a pattern while keeping the matching value in the sublist?

For instance, we have the following list:

{a, x, x, a, b, y, a, c, z}

and we want to produce the following (split on a):

{{a, x, x}, {a, b, y}, {a, c, z}}

then how might we achieve this? In other words, we want to split a list based on a condition while keeping the condition in the sublist. So far I've tried SequenceSplit which produces the list without a (in this case). However, I'm having trouble formulating the pattern which will keep the split value in the sublist.

Thanks very much for your time!

Answer 1

alist = {a, x, x, a, b, y, a, c, z}

Split[alist, UnsameQ[#2, a] &]

{{a, x, x}, {a, b, y}, {a, c, z}}

Answer 2

SequenceCases[{a, x, x, a, b, y, a, c, z}, {a, Except[a] ..}]

{{a, x, x}, {a, b, y}, {a, c, z}}