convert a word to a list of chars

Question

I can split a sentence into individual words like so:

string = 'This is a string, with words!'
string.split(" ")
['This', 'is', 'a', 'string,', 'with', 'words!']

But I don't know how to split a word into letters:

word = "word"
word.split("")

Throws me an error. Ideally I want it to return ['w','o','r','d'] thats why the split argument is "".

What are you trying to do? You can access individual elements of a string just like in a list - i.e. `word[0]` will give you `w`. — Hannele, Mar 14 '13 at 19:35
yeah it's a duplicate, sorry didin't find it earlier. i'm deleting it. — user1103294, Mar 14 '13 at 19:36

score 27 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

27

>>> s = "foobar"
>>> list(s)
['f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r']

answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

iblazevic

2,713
2
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score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:42

In Python string is iterable. This means it supports special protocol.

>>> s = '123'
>>> i = iter(s)
>>> i
<iterator object at 0x00E82C50>
>>> i.next()
'1'
>>> i.next()
'2'
>>> i.next()
'3'
>>> i.next()

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#7>", line 1, in <module>
    i.next()
StopIteration

list constructor may build list of any iterable. It relies on this special method next and gets letter by letter from string until it encounters StopIteration.

So, the easiest way to make a list of letters from string is to feed it to list constructor:

>>> list(s)
['1', '2', '3']

Upvoted because I learned about StopIteration here :) – Vers Jan 20 '21 at 23:43 — Vers, Jan 20 '21 at 23:43

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

4

list(word)

you can pass it to list

>>> list('word')
['w', 'o', 'r', 'd']

answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

dm03514

54,664
18
108
145

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

3

In python send it to

    list(word)

answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

apollosoftware.org

12,161
4
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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

2

You can iterate over each letter in a string like this:

>>> word = "word"
>>> for letter in word:
...     print letter;
...
w
o
r
d
>>>

answered Mar 14 '13 at 19:35

CraigTeegarden

8,173
8
38
43

sorry, but that is not 'python way' – Dmitriy Apollonin Mar 15 '17 at 20:16

convert a word to a list of chars

5 Answers5

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