split Examples

The general syntax for this method is:

string_name.split('delimiter')

split divides a string into smaller pieces, which are stored in a collection called a list. The delimiter is a string, and it determines how string_name gets broken apart.

Including a value for delimiter is optional. By default, Python splits a string at each space.

Example

vocab = "conditional;loop;string;int;bool;float"
word = "Bananas"
phrase = "Bookkeeper of balloons."

print(phrase.split())      # Split the string at each space (default).

print(vocab.split(';'))    # Split the string at each ';' character.

print(word.split('nana'))  # Split the string at each 'nana' substring.

Console Output

['Bookkeeper', 'of', 'balloons.']
['conditional', 'loop', 'string', 'int', 'bool', 'float']
['Ba', 's']

Notice that in each case, the delimiter string is NOT included in the resulting list.

list Function

Sometimes we might want to split a string into a list of individual characters. To make this happen, we need to use the list() function instead of the split method.

The general syntax is:

list(string_name)

Note

Did you spot the difference in syntax? Methods are called using dot notation (string_name.method_name()), while list is called by placing string_name inside the ().

list is a function and NOT a string method. This means we can call list on objects besides strings. Methods like split can only be called on a specific data type: strings.

Example

word = "Bananas"
phrase = "Bookkeeper of balloons."

print(list(word))      # Split the string into individual characters.

print(list(phrase))

Console Output

['B', 'a', 'n', 'a', 'n', 'a', 's']
['B', 'o', 'o', 'k', 'k', 'e', 'e', 'p', 'e', 'r', ' ', 'o', 'f', ' ', 'b', 'a', 'l', 'l', 'o', 'o', 'n', 's', '.']

Note that the resulting lists show all of the characters from the strings, including spaces.