How to use Python split()
What is the split() method?
The split() method splits a string into a list. Values in the list are separated using a separator character, mostly a whitespace by default.
Note: Common separators include whitespace and commas.
Syntax
The general syntax of the split() method is:
string_name.split(separator, maxsplit)
-
separatoris the character thesplit()function will use to separate the characters in the string. By default, it’s awhitespaceand this parameter is optional. -
maxsplitis the maximum number of splits to be made. By default, it is equal to-1, which means that the function will split at all occurrences of the specified separator. This parameter is also optional.
Note: You do not need to import any libraries to use the
split()function, since it’s a built-in function.
How does the split() function work?
Let’s split a sentence on a whitespace and see what we get!
sentence = "I am a split function"split_sentence = sentence.split(" ")print(split_sentence)
Let’s split a sentence on a comma , and see what we get!
sentence = "The shop has cats, dogs, hamsters, and turtles."split_sentence = sentence.split(",")print(split_sentence)
Now let’s set the maxsplit parameter as 2. Setting the maxsplit parameter to 2 will split the string two times on a #, and will return a list with three elements!
sentence = "I#am splitting on #hash#and#have#maxsplit#value of #2"split_sentence = sentence.split("#", 2)print(split_sentence)
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