5 simple examples to learn python string.split()

In this Python tutorial we will learn about Python split() string function. Unlike len(), some functions are specific to strings. To use a string function, type the name of the string, a dot, the name of the function, and any arguments that the function needs: string.function(arguments). You can use the built-in string split() function to break a string into a list of smaller strings based on some separator.

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Python string.split() syntax

The syntax as per docs.python.org to use string.split():

string.split([separator[, maxsplit]])

Here,

• separator is the delimiter string
• If maxsplit is given, at most maxsplit splits are done (thus, the list will have at most maxsplit+1 elements)
• If maxsplit is not specified or -1, then there is no limit on the number of splits (all possible splits are made).
• If separator is given, consecutive delimiters are not grouped together and are deemed to delimit empty strings (for example, '1,,2'.split(',') returns ['1', '', '2'])
• If separator is not specified or is None, runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator, and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace. For example, ' 1 2 3 '.split() returns ['1', '2', '3']

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Example-1: Split string with whitespace

In this example script we will split a sentence containing strings into multiple sub string using whitespace as the separator. If you don’t have a separator to be defined then you can just provide split() which will by default consider separator as None.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

mystring = "This is Python Tutorial"

print(type(mystring)) ## This will return type as string
newstring = mystring.split() ## split the string and store into newstring var
print(newstring)  ## print the content of newstring
print(type(newstring))  ## the new type would be list after splitting

Output from this script:

string.split() will break and split the string on the argument that is passed and return all the parts in a list. The list will not include the splitting character(s).

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Example-2: Use comma as separator

In this example we will define a separator as comma(,) and split the strings into list

#!/usr/bin/env python3

mystring = "abc,def,ghi"

print(type(mystring)) ## This will return type as string
newstring = mystring.split(',') ## split the string using ',' and store into newstring var
print(newstring)  ## print the content of newstring
print(type(newstring))  ## the new type would be list after splitting

Output from this script:

So the output is split using the comma character this time because we used string.split(,). Similarly you can use any other character to split your string.

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Example-3: Define maximum split limit

By default if your don’t specify split limit, then all the possible values will be slit from the provided string. In this example we will define maxlimit as 1 so after the first split, python will ignore the remaining separators.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

mystring = "abc,def,ghi,tre,deb"

print(type(mystring)) ## This will return type as string

## split the string using sep=',' with maxlimit=1 and store into newstring var
newstring = mystring.split(',',1)

print(newstring)  ## print the content of newstring
print(type(newstring))  ## the new type would be list after splitting

Output from this script:

As you can see from the output, our string was split into two parts wherein after the first separator match, all other commas are ignored.

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Example-4: Count occurrences of word in a file

The split() method separates a string into parts wherever it finds a space and stores all the parts of the string in a list. The result is a list of words from the string, although some punctuation may also appear with some of the words.

We will use split() to count the number of word in “/usr/share/doc/grep/README” file. You can ignore the try and except block if you are not yet familiar with it, you can concentrate on the else block where I am performing the actual task:

Output from this script:

~]# python3 count-words.py
The file /usr/share/doc/grep/README has about 372 words.

Let us verify the output with wc:

~]# wc -w /usr/share/doc/grep/README
372 /usr/share/doc/grep/README

So the output from our script and wc are same which means split() has successfully separated the words.

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Example-5: Split string using one liner with for loop

In this example we will use one liner code to split the string and print words having more than 4 characters.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

mystring = 'This is a dummy text we are testing python split string'

## One-Liner
w = [[x for x in line.split() if len(x)>4] for line in mystring.split('\n')]

## Result
print(w)

Here,

• The inner list comprehension expression [x for x in line.split() if len(x)>4] uses the string split() function to divide a given line into a sequence of words. We iterate over all words x and add them to the list if they have more than three characters.
• The outer list comprehension expression creates the string line used in the previous statement. Again, it uses the split() function to divide the mystring on the newline characters '\n'.

Output from this script:

 ~]# python3 one-liner-split.py
[['dummy', 'testing', 'python', 'split', 'string']]

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Conclusion

In this tutorial we learned about string.split() using different examples. We can combine split with regex to add more powerful features which will cover in different tutorial. Here I have covered limited examples on using it with string in different scenarios.