{"id":129199,"date":"2022-10-25T17:11:24","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.finxter.com\/?p=823766"},"modified":"2022-10-25T17:11:24","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:11:24","slug":"python-split-string-by-whitespace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/10\/25\/python-split-string-by-whitespace\/","title":{"rendered":"Python | Split String by Whitespace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Rate this post<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Summary: <\/strong>Use \"given string\".split()<\/code> to split the given string by whitespace and store each word as an individual item in a list.
Minimal Example:<\/strong>
print(\"Welcome Finxter\".split())<\/code>
# OUTPUT: [‘Welcome’, ‘Finxter’]<\/p>\n

Problem Formulation<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Problem<\/strong>: Given a string, How will you split the string into a list of words using whitespace as a separator\/delimiter?<\/p>\n

Let’s understand the problem with the help of a few examples:<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n
Example 1:<\/strong>
Input:<\/strong> text = “Welcome to the world of Python”
Explanation: <\/strong>Split the string into a list of words using a space ” ” as the delimiter to separate the words from the given string.
Output: <\/strong>
[‘Welcome’, ‘to’, ‘the’, ‘world’, ‘of’, ‘Python’]<\/p>\n

Example 2: <\/strong>
Input:<\/strong>
text = “””Item_1
Item_2
Item_3″””
print(text.split(‘\\n’))
Explanation: <\/strong>Split the string into a list of words using a newline “\\n” as the delimiter to separate the words from the given string.
Output:<\/strong> [‘Item_1’, ‘Item_2’, ‘Item_3’]<\/p>\n

Example 3: <\/strong>
text = “This is just a random text:\\n New Line”
Explanation: <\/strong>The given string contains a combination of whitespaces between the words, such as space, multiple-spaces, a tab and a new line character. All of these whitespace characters have to be considered as delimiters while separating the words from the given string and storing them as items in a list. Here’s how the output looks:
Output:<\/strong>
[‘This’, ‘is’, ‘just’, ‘a’, ‘random’, ‘text:’, ‘New’, ‘Line’]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n

So, we have two situations at hand. One, that has a single whitespace used as a delimiter and another that has multiple whitespace characters as delimiters in the same string. Let’s dive into the numerous ways of solving this problem. <\/p>\n

Method 1: Using split()<\/strong> <\/h2>\n

split()<\/code> is a built-in method in Python which splits the string at a given separator and returns a split list of substrings. Here’s a minimal example that demonstrates how the split<\/code> function works – finxterx42'.split('x')<\/code> will split the string with the character ‘x’ as the delimiter and return the following list as an output: ['fin', 'ter', '42']<\/code>. The default separator, i.e., when no value is passed to the split function is considered as any whitespace character, i.e., it will take into account any whitespace such as ‘\\n’, ” “, ‘\\t’, etc.<\/p>\n

Read more about the split()<\/code> method in this blog tutorial: Python String split()<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Approach: <\/strong>Thus to split a string based on a given whitespace delimiter, you can simply pass the specific whitespace character as a separator\/delimiter to the split('whitespace_character')<\/code> function.<\/p>\n

Code: <\/strong><\/p>\n

# Example 1:\ntext = \"Welcome to the world of Python\"\nprint(text.split(' '))\n# OUTPUT: ['Welcome', 'to', 'the', 'world', 'of', 'Python'] # Example 2:\ntext = \"\"\"Item 1\nItem 2\nItem 3\"\"\"\nprint(text.split('\\n'))\n# OUTPUT: ['Item_1', 'Item_2', 'Item_3'] # Example 3: text = \"This is just a\\trandom text:\\nNew Line\"\nprint(text.split()) # OUTPUT: ['This', 'is', 'just', 'a', 'random', 'text:', 'New', 'Line']<\/pre>\n
Note that to separate the words in the third example we did specify any separator within the split()<\/code> function. This is because when you don’t specify the separator, then Python will automatically consider that any whitespace character that occurs within the given string is a separator. <\/p>\n
Method 2: Using regex<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Another extremely handy way of separating a string with whitespace characters as separators is to use the regex library. <\/p>\n
Approach 1: <\/strong>Import the regex library and use its split method as re.split('\\s+', text)<\/code> where ‘\\s+’ returns a match whenever the string contains one or more whitespace characters. Therefore, whenever any whitespace character is encountered, the string will be separated at that point. <\/p>\n
Code:<\/strong><\/p>\n
import re\n# Example 1:\ntext = \"Welcome to the world of Python\"\nprint(re.split('\\s+', text))\n# OUTPUT: ['Welcome', 'to', 'the', 'world', 'of', 'Python'] # Example 2:\ntext = \"\"\"Item_1\nItem_2\nItem_3\"\"\"\nprint(re.split('\\s+', text))\n# OUTPUT: ['Item_1', 'Item_2', 'Item_3'] # Example 3:\ntext = \"This is just a\\trandom text:\\nNew Line\"\nprint(re.split('\\s+', text))\n# OUTPUT: ['This', 'is', 'just', 'a', 'random', 'text:', 'New', 'Line']<\/pre>\n
Related Tutorial: Python Regex Split<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Approach 2: <\/strong>Another way of using the regex library to solve this question is to use the findall()<\/code> method of the regex library. Import the regex library and use re.findall(r'\\S+', text)<\/code> where the expression returns all the characters\/words in a list that do not contain any whitespace character. This essentially means that whenever Python finds and segregates a string that has no whitespace in it. As soon as a whitespace character is found it considers that as a breakpoint, therefore the next word that has a continuous sequence of characters without the presence of any whitespace character is taken into account. <\/p>\n
Here’s a graphical representation of the above explanaton:<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n
Code:<\/strong><\/p>\n
import re\n# Example 1:\ntext = \"Welcome to the world of Python\"\nprint(re.findall(r'\\S+', text))\n# OUTPUT: ['Welcome', 'to', 'the', 'world', 'of', 'Python'] # Example 2:\ntext = \"\"\"Item_1\nItem_2\nItem_3\"\"\"\nprint(re.findall(r'\\S+', text))\n# OUTPUT: ['Item_1', 'Item_2', 'Item_3'] # Example 3:\ntext = \"This is just a random text:\\n New Line\"\nprint(re.findall(r'\\S+', text))\n# OUTPUT: ['This', 'is', 'just', 'a', 'random', 'text:', 'New', 'Line']<\/pre>\n
Related Tutorial: Python re.findall() \u2013 Everything You Need to Know<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Do you want to master the regex superpower?<\/em><\/strong> Check out my new book The Smartest Way to Learn Regular Expressions in Python<\/a><\/strong><\/em> with the innovative 3-step approach for active learning: (1) study a book chapter, (2) solve a code puzzle, and (3) watch an educational chapter video. <\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n
We have successfully solved the given problem using different approaches. I hope you enjoyed this article<\/a> and it helps you in your Python coding journey. Please subscribe and stay tuned<\/a> for more interesting articles!<\/p>\n
Related Reads:<\/strong>
\u29bf<\/a> How To Split A String And Keep The Separators?<\/strong><\/a>
\u29bf<\/a> How To Cut A String In Python?<\/strong><\/a> 
\u29bf Python | Split String into Characters<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
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Python Regex Course<\/a><\/h2>\n
Google engineers are regular expression masters. <\/em><\/strong>The Google search engine is a massive text-processing engine<\/em> that extracts value from trillions of webpages.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Facebook engineers are regular expression masters.<\/em><\/strong> Social networks like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram connect humans via text messages<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amazon engineers are regular expression masters. <\/em><\/strong>Ecommerce giants ship products based on textual product descriptions<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Regular expressions \u200brule the game \u200bwhen text processing \u200bmeets computer science.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you want to become a regular expression master too, check out the most comprehensive Python regex course<\/a> on the planet:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
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Rate this post Summary: Use “given string”.split() to split the given string by whitespace and store each word as an individual item in a list.Minimal Example:print(“Welcome Finxter”.split())# OUTPUT: [‘Welcome’, ‘Finxter’] Problem Formulation Problem: Given a string, How will you split the string into a list of words using whitespace as a separator\/delimiter? Let’s understand the problem with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[857],"tags":[73,468,528],"class_list":["post-129199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-python-tut","tag-programming","tag-python","tag-tutorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}