Alphabet range in Python

Question

How do I create a list of alphabet characters, without doing it manually like this?

['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', ..., 'z']

Answer 1

>>> import string
>>> string.ascii_lowercase
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
>>> list(string.ascii_lowercase)
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']

---

Alternatively, using range:

>>> list(map(chr, range(97, 123)))
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']

Or equivalently:

>>> list(map(chr, range(ord('a'), ord('z')+1)))
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']

---

Other helpful string module features:

>>> help(string)
....
DATA
    ascii_letters = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
    ascii_lowercase = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
    ascii_uppercase = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
    digits = '0123456789'
    hexdigits = '0123456789abcdefABCDEF'
    octdigits = '01234567'
    printable = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~ \t\n\r\x0b\x0c'
    punctuation = '!"#$%&\'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\]^_`{|}~'
    whitespace = ' \t\n\r\x0b\x0c'

Answer 2

[chr(i) for i in range(ord('a'),ord('z')+1)]

Answer 3

In Python 2.7 and 3 you can use this:

import string
string.ascii_lowercase
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'

string.ascii_uppercase
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'

As @Zaz says: string.lowercase is deprecated and no longer works in Python 3 but string.ascii_lowercase works in both

Answer 4

Here is a simple letter-range implementation:

Code

def letter_range(start, stop="{", step=1):
    """Yield a range of lowercase letters.""" 
    for ord_ in range(ord(start.lower()), ord(stop.lower()), step):
        yield chr(ord_)

Demo

list(letter_range("a", "f"))
# ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

list(letter_range("a", "f", step=2))
# ['a', 'c', 'e']

Answer 5

If you are looking to an equivalent of letters[1:10] from R, you can use:

import string
list(string.ascii_lowercase[0:10])

Answer 6

This is the easiest way I can figure out:

#!/usr/bin/python3
for i in range(97, 123):
    print("{:c}".format(i), end='')

So, 97 to 122 are the ASCII number equivalent to 'a' to and 'z'. Notice the lowercase and the need to put 123, since it will not be included).

In print function make sure to set the {:c} (character) format, and, in this case, we want it to print it all together not even letting a new line at the end, so end=''would do the job.

The result is this: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Answer 7

Print the Upper and Lower case alphabets in python using a built-in range function

def upperCaseAlphabets():
    print("Upper Case Alphabets")
    for i in range(65, 91):
        print(chr(i), end=" ")
    print()

def lowerCaseAlphabets():
    print("Lower Case Alphabets")
    for i in range(97, 123):
        print(chr(i), end=" ")

upperCaseAlphabets();
lowerCaseAlphabets();

Answer 8

Here is how I implemented my custom function for letters range generation based on string.ascii_letters:

from string import ascii_letters


def range_alpha(start_letter, end_letter):
  return ascii_letters[
    ascii_letters.index(start_letter):ascii_letters.index(end_letter) + 1
  ]

print(range_alpha('a', 'z'))
print(range_alpha('A', 'Z'))
print(range_alpha('a', 'Z'))

Answer 9

Although this is an old question, I'll give an answer which is quite flexible. If you have PyICU installed, this can be easily leveraged for this task:

from icu import UnicodeSet
lset = UnicodeSet('[a-z]')
print(list(lset))
# ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
ulset = UnicodeSet('[a-zA-Z]')
print(list(ulset))
# ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']

But you can also use any UnicodeSet patterns in the same way:

uset2 = UnicodeSet('[[:Ll:]&[:Latin:]]')

This pattern is an intersection between two sets. The intersection between all lowercase characters and all Latin characters, i.e. all the lowercase Latin characters.

Answer 10

you can do without import

  list = [chr(item) for item in range(ord("a"), ord("z") + 1)]

Answer 11

If you want upper/lower case range and also want alternate or with steps then you try below code.

def letter_range(start, stop="{", step=1):
    """Yield a range of upper/lowercase letters."""
    if start.isupper():
        if stop == "{":
            stop = "["
        else:
            stop = stop.upper()
        ascii_uppercase = [chr(item) for item in range(ord(start), ord(stop), step)]
        print(ascii_uppercase)

    elif start.islower():
        ascii_lowercase = [chr(item) for item in range(ord(start), ord(stop), step)]
        print(ascii_lowercase)
    else:
        print("Check your input")


letter_range("a", "f", 2)
letter_range("A", "f",)

['a', 'c', 'e']
['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']