Python split string into letters

Python split string into letters

Last updated: Feb 19, 2023
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# Table of Contents

# Split a String into a List of Characters in Python

Use the list() class to split a string into a list of characters, e.g. my_list = list(my_str) .

The list() class will convert the string into a list of characters.

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = list(my_str) # 👇️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] print(my_list) 

The list class takes an iterable and returns a list object.

When a string is passed to the class, it splits the string on each character and returns a list containing the characters.

# Split a String into a list of characters using a list comprehension

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = [letter for letter in my_str] # 👇️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] print(my_list) 

List comprehensions are used to perform some operation for every element, or select a subset of elements that meet a condition.

You can also filter letters out of the final list when using this approach.

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my_str = 'b o b b y' my_list = [letter for letter in my_str if letter.strip()] # 👇️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] print(my_list) 

The string in the example has spaces.

Instead of getting list items that contain a space, we call the strip() method on each letter and see if the result is truthy.

The str.strip method returns a copy of the string with the leading and trailing whitespace removed.

If the string stores a space, it would get excluded from the final list.

# Split a String into a list of Characters using a for loop

You can also use a simple for loop to split a string into a list of characters.

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = [] for letter in my_str: my_list.append(letter) # 👇️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] print(my_list) 

We used a for loop to iterate over the string and use the append method to add each letter to the list.

The list.append() method adds an item to the end of the list.

The method returns None as it mutates the original list.

You can also conditionally add the letter to the list.

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = [] for letter in my_str: if letter.strip() != '': my_list.append(letter) # 👇️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] print(my_list) 

The string is only added to the list if it isn’t a space.

# Split a String into a List of Characters using iterable unpacking

You can also use the iterable unpacking * operator to split a string into a list of characters.

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = [*my_str] print(my_list) # 👉️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] 

Notice that we wrapped the string in a list before using iterable unpacking.

The * iterable unpacking operator enables us to unpack an iterable in function calls, in comprehensions and in generator expressions.

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example = (*(1, 2), 3) # 👇️ (1, 2, 3) print(example) 

# Split a String into a List of Characters using extend

You can also use the list.extend() method to split a string into a list of characters.

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = [] my_list.extend(my_str) print(my_list) # 👉️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] 

The list.extend method takes an iterable and extends the list by appending all of the items from the iterable.

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my_list = ['bobby'] my_list.extend(['hadz', '.', 'com']) print(my_list) # 👉️ ['bobby', 'hadz', '.', 'com'] 

The list.extend method returns None as it mutates the original list.

We can directly pass a string to the list.extend() method because strings are iterable.

Each character of the string gets added as a separate element to the list.

# Split a String into a List of Characters using map()

You can also use the map() function to split a string into a list of characters.

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my_str = 'bobby' my_list = list(map(lambda char: char, my_str)) print(my_list) # 👉️ ['b', 'o', 'b', 'b', 'y'] 

Instead of passing the string directly to the list() class, we used the map() function to get a map object containing the characters of the string.

The map() function takes a function and an iterable as arguments and calls the function with each item of the iterable.

The lambda function we passed to map gets called with each character of the string and returns it.

The last step is to convert the map() object to a list.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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How To Split A Word Into A List Of Letters In Python

To split a word into a list of letters in Python, you can use list(), append(), extend() functions and for loop. Follow the article to understand better.

Split a word into a list of letters in Python

In Python, ‘list’ is a data type that allows storing various data types inside it and retrieving their values through the position of the elements. In Python, you can say ‘list’ is the most flexible data type.

To split a word into a list of letters in Python, I have the following ways:

Use the list() function

In this method list() function will split each word into a list of independent letters.

strMesg = 'Visit learnshareIT website' # Use the list() function to split that string into a list of letters print(list(strMesg))

['V', 'i', 's', 'i', 't', ' ', 'l', 'e', 'a', 'r', 'n', 's', 'h', 'a', 'r', 'e', 'I', 'T', ' ', 'w', 'e', 'b', 's', 'i', 't', 'e']

Use the extend() method

The extend() method in Python is used to add elements of an iterable (an object containing many elements) such as a list, tuple, or string to the end of a list in Python and expand that list.

• list: is the original list.
• iterable: is the object containing the elements to be added to the original list.

• Create a string.
• Initialize an empty array to store the list of letters after splitting.
• Use extend() function to split.
• Print out the list initialized in step 2.

strMesg = 'Visit learnshareIT website' emptyList = [] # Use extend() function to split emptyList.extend(strMesg) print(emptyList)

['V', 'i', 's', 'i', 't', ' ', 'l', 'e', 'a', 'r', 'n', 's', 'h', 'a', 'r', 'e', 'I', 'T', ' ', 'w', 'e', 'b', 's', 'i', 't', 'e']

Use For loop

The for loop is also used to split a word into a list of letters.

strMesg = 'Visit learnshareIT website' result = [l for l in strMesg] print(result)

['V', 'i', 's', 'i', 't', ' ', 'l', 'e', 'a', 'r', 'n', 's', 'h', 'a', 'r', 'e', 'I', 'T', ' ', 'w', 'e', 'b', 's', 'i', 't', 'e']

Use the append() method

The append() method in Python is used to add an element to the end of a list in Python. We use append to add a number, a list, a string or a tuple as an element to the end of a python list.

• list: is the initial list.
• element: is the element to be added.

• Create a string.
• Initialize an empty array to store the list of letters after splitting.
• Use append() function to split.
• Print out the list initialized in step 2.

strMesg = 'Visit learnshareIT website' emptyList = [] for i in strMesg: emptyList.append(i) # Use append() function to split print(emptyList)

['V', 'i', 's', 'i', 't', ' ', 'l', 'e', 'a', 'r', 'n', 's', 'h', 'a', 'r', 'e', 'I', 'T', ' ', 'w', 'e', 'b', 's', 'i', 't', 'e']

Summary

If you have any questions about how to split a word into a list of letters in Python, leave a comment below. I will answer your questions. Thank you for reading!

Maybe you are interested:

My name is Jason Wilson, you can call me Jason. My major is information technology, and I am proficient in C++, Python, and Java. I hope my writings are useful to you while you study programming languages.

Name of the university: HHAU
Major: IT
Programming Languages: C++, Python, Java

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How to Split a String into a List of Words or Letters in Python

Do you want to split a string into a list of words or into a list of letters? This article will demonstrate how to split a string into a list of words or letters in Python.

In Python, we have a method or function named split in the String class that can be used to split or convert the list of words for a given String in Python. Below is the example of usage of the split method of string class.

How to Split a String into a List of Words in Python

To convert or split a string into a list of words you can directly use the split() function on the given string. If no delimiter or default delimiter is used inside the split method then it will return the list of Words.

#Initializing the String to Split or #Convert it to List of Words givenString = "You are Visiting Coduber Website." #Using Split Method with Default Delimiter #To Split the method based on space between #the Words listOfWord = givenString.split() #Priting the List of Words print(listOfWord)

['You', 'are', 'Visiting', 'Coduber', 'Website.']

As shown in the above code, using the split method with nothing inside the small braces splits the words based on the spaces present in the given string.

Split the String Using Delimiter in Python

If you are having a string that is not based on space but for example is based on the hyphen. Let’s take an example that you have a string that is URL and you want to split it into Words. To do that you need to use the hyphen delimiter inside the braces of the split.

Let us see in the below example code the usage of the split() method with delimiter in Python.

#Initializing the String to Split or #Convert it to List of Words givenString = "split-string-with-single-delimiters-in-python" #Using Split Method with Single Delimiter #To Split the method based on hyphen between #the Words listOfWord = givenString.split('-') #Priting the List of Words print(listOfWord)

['split', 'string', 'with', 'single', 'delimiters', 'in', 'python']

As shown above, using a single delimiter in the split method I was able to split the string into words based on the hyphen.

Split the String into List Using Multiple Delimiter

Now to extend the above problem statement if you have a string that you want to split or extract the words into a list using multiple delimiters then you cannot use the split method of String Class or Library.

In this you need to use the split method present in regex Library, to split the given string based on the multiple delimiters. Let us see in the below example code the usage of regex to split the string based on a delimiter.

#importing regex Library import re #Initializing the String to Split or #Convert it to List of Words using #multiple delimiters givenString = "https:coduber.com/reading-a-binary-file-in-python-with-examples" #Using regex Split Method with Single Delimiter #To Split the method based on hyphen between #the Words listOfWord = re.split('[:./-]', givenString) #Priting the List of Words print(listOfWord)

['https', 'coduber', 'com', 'reading', 'a', 'binary', 'file', 'in', 'python', 'with', 'examples']

As shown in the above code using the regex split function I was able to split the string into a list of words based on the multiple delimiters of colon, dash, slash, and dot. I have mentioned all the delimiters inside the square bracket as it makes the code look cleaner.

Note: If you will have delimiters present in the string back to back then you may encounter an empty string in the list. You need to take care of that if you do not want the empty string in the list.

How To Split a String into List of Letters in Python

Now another question in this problem is how to convert or split the string into a list of letters. Here you do not want it to be in Words rather you want it to be in Letters.

This problem is fairly simple to solve and you are not required to use the split method here. All you need to do is use the list constructor.

Let us see the usage of List Constructor to convert a String into a List of Letters.

#Convert it to List of Letters using #Using List Constructor givenString = "Convert to List of Letters" #Using list Constructor listOfWord = list(givenString) #Priting the List of Words print(listOfWord)

['C', 'o', 'n', 'v', 'e', 'r', 't', ' ', 't', 'o', ' ', 'L', 'i', 's', 't', ' ', 'o', 'f', ' ', 'L', 'e', 't', 't', 'e', 'r', 's']

As shown in the above code using List Constructor I easily converted the given String into a List of Letters.

Or alternatively, you can use the split method to split the string into a list of Words, and then you can convert those words into a list of letters using List Constructor. But that will be really a complicated method to follow.

Wrap Up

Hope You were able to learn about splitting and converting a string into words and letters with and without delimiters in Python. You can solve your problem with the split method of either string class or regex library as per your requirement.

Let me know in the comment section if you have any better solution than the above-mentioned. I will be happy to add it here.

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