Python String split() function

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Python string split() functions enable the user to split the list of strings. It’s very useful when we are working with CSV data.

String split() function syntax

string.split(separator, maxsplit)
  • separator: It basically acts as a delimiter and splits the string at the specified separator value.
  • maxsplit: It is a limit up to which the string can be split

Example: split() function

input= 'Engineering comprises of many courses.'

# splits at space
print(input.split())

Output:

['Engineering', 'comprises', 'of', 'many', 'courses.']

Example: Using “,” as a separator

input = "hello, Engineering and Medical, are two different disciplines"

result = input.split(",")

print(result)

Output:

['hello', 'Engineering and Medical', 'are two different disciplines']

Example: Setting maxsplit = value

input = "hello, Engineering and Medical, are two different disciplines"

# maxsplit = 1, returns a list with 2 elements..
i = input.split(",", 1)

print(i)

Output:

['hello', ' Engineering and Medical, are two different disciplines']

Multiline string split() function

input = 'Engineering discipline\nCommerce and Science\nYes and No'
result = input.split('\n')
for x in result:
    print(x)

Output:

Engineering discipline
Commerce and Science
Yes and No

Multi-Character separator in split() function

input = 'Engineering||Science||Commerce'
result = input.split('||')
print(result)

Output:

['Engineering', 'Science', 'Commerce']

str.split() function

Python String split() function can be used with class reference also. We have to pass the source string to split.

print(str.split('SAFA', sep='A'))
print(str.split('AMURA', sep='A', maxsplit=3))

CSV-String split() function

csv_input = input('Enter CSV Data\n')
csv_output1 = csv_input.split(sep=',')

print('\nList of inputs =', csv_output1)

Output:

Enter CSV Data
Android, Kotlin, Perl, Go

List of inputs = ['Android', ' Kotlin', ' Perl', ' Go']

Conclusion

Python string split() function is very useful in splitting delimiter based values into a list of strings.

References