Python String split() Method

Python provides the string type which is a variable or value in order to store multiple characters. This can be also called the string used to store text data. As a popular type, the string type provides a lot of methods where in order to split strings according to different cases the split() method is provided.

String split() Method Syntax

The split() method has the following syntax.

STRING.split(SEPARATOR,MAX_SPLIT)
  • STRING is the string value or string variable.
  • SEPARATOR is the single or multiple separator characters used to split given STRING. This parameter is optional.
  • MAX_SPLIT is the number of the maximum slit count. This parameter is optional.

The split() method returns the split items as a list.

Split with Whitespaces

By default, we can use the split() method without providing any parameter like separator or max split. This will split the given string into items in a list where the whitespace is the separator.

sentence = "I like pythontect"

items= sentence.split()

print(items)

print("I like pythontect".split())

The output will be like the below. We can see that every word is a list item.

['I', 'like', 'pythontect']
['I', 'like', 'pythontect']

Split with Different Characters

By default, the split() method implicitly specifies the separator character as whitespace. But we can specify different characters as split or separator characters this can be a single character or multiple characters. In the following example, we use the ; and ,, characters in order to split a string into a list.

sentence = "I;like;pythontect"

items = sentence.split(";")

print(items)

print("I,,like,,pythontect".split(",,"))

Specify Split Count (MaxSplit)

By default, the given string variable or string value will be split with all items. But alternatively, we can specify the split count where only a given number of items will be split and returned as a list.

sentence = "I#like#pythontect"

items = sentence.split("#",1)

print(items)

print("I,,like,,pythontect".split(",,",1))

The output will be like the below.

['I', 'like#pythontect']
['I', 'like,,pythontect']

Split with Comma

Another popular string split character is the comma. We can split a string by using the comma as a delimiter.

sentence = "I,like,pythontect"

items = sentence.split(",")

print(items)
['I', 'like', 'pythontect']

Split Sentence Into Words

Another popular use case for the string splitting sentence into words. Whitespace is used to split a sentence into words where every word is an item in the returned list.

sentence = "I like pythontect"

items = sentence.split(" ")

print(items)
['I', 'like', 'pythontect']

Split with Hash Sign

We can use the hash sign (#) in order to split a string. The string can be a sentence or another type of string.

s = "I#like#pythontect"

items = s.split("#")

print(items)

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