How would I be able to take a string like 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'
and split it into 4 length tuples like (aaaa
,aaaa
,aaaa
)

- 50,140
- 28
- 121
- 140

- 477
- 1
- 9
- 16
-
1for x in s:x = s[0:4];s = s[4:];print(x) – Swaroop Nagendra Jan 25 '14 at 13:44
-
related: [What is the most “pythonic” way to iterate over a list in chunks?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/434287/4279) – jfs Apr 04 '16 at 11:37
-
Does this answer your question? [Split string every nth character?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9475241/split-string-every-nth-character) – AMC Feb 16 '20 at 00:18
9 Answers
Use textwrap.wrap
:
>>> import textwrap
>>> s = 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'
>>> textwrap.wrap(s, 4)
['aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaa']

- 244,495
- 58
- 464
- 504
-
7
-
`textwrap` is very powerful and IMO, for a precise task like this, offers far too many options for things like replacing tabs with spaces, fixing sentence punctuation, etc. I would be more comfortable using something much simpler. – Jonathan Hartley Aug 31 '23 at 03:53
Using list comprehension, generator expression:
>>> s = 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'
>>> [s[i:i+4] for i in range(0, len(s), 4)]
['aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaa']
>>> tuple(s[i:i+4] for i in range(0, len(s), 4))
('aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaa')
>>> s = 'a bcdefghi j'
>>> tuple(s[i:i+4] for i in range(0, len(s), 4))
('a bc', 'defg', 'hi j')

- 357,413
- 63
- 732
- 636
Another solution using regex:
>>> s = 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'
>>> import re
>>> re.findall('[a-z]{4}', s)
['aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa']
>>>

- 16,036
- 12
- 50
- 73
-
7
-
The owner was asking for a solution, not asking for the most optimize one, so i just put as we can solve in that way too. never mind, i know its not the best of its kind. – James Sapam Jan 25 '14 at 14:08
-
Actually, that's a really nice solution (apart from regular expressions being slower when used in bulk) and easier to understand on first sight than the `zip()` solution. And it can easily be changed to work with arbitrary characters, including newlines: `re.findall('.{4}', s, re.DOTALL)` - Or even accept incomplete tails: `re.findall('.{1,4}', s, re.DOTALL)` – blubberdiblub Apr 05 '17 at 09:44
You could use the grouper recipe, zip(*[iter(s)]*4)
:
In [113]: s = 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'
In [114]: [''.join(item) for item in zip(*[iter(s)]*4)]
Out[114]: ['aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa', 'aaaa']
Note that textwrap.wrap
may not split s
into strings of length 4 if the string contains spaces:
In [43]: textwrap.wrap('I am a hat', 4)
Out[43]: ['I am', 'a', 'hat']
The grouper recipe is faster than using textwrap
:
In [115]: import textwrap
In [116]: %timeit [''.join(item) for item in zip(*[iter(s)]*4)]
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.41 µs per loop
In [117]: %timeit textwrap.wrap(s, 4)
10000 loops, best of 3: 32.5 µs per loop
And the grouper recipe can work with any iterator, while textwrap
only works with strings.

- 842,883
- 184
- 1,785
- 1,677
s = 'abcdefghi'
k - no of parts of string
k = 3
parts - list to store parts of string
parts = [s[i:i+k] for i in range(0, len(s), k)]
parts --> ['abc', 'def', 'ghi']

- 666
- 1
- 8
- 18
s = 'abcdef'
We need to split in parts of 2
[s[pos:pos+2] for pos,i in enumerate(list(s)) if pos%2 == 0]
Answer:
['ab', 'cd', 'ef']

- 5,927
- 5
- 55
- 63
I think this method is simpler. But the message length must be split with split_size. Or letters must be added to the message. Example: message = "lorem ipsum_" then the added letter can be deleted.
message = "lorem ipsum"
array = []
temp = ""
split_size = 3
for i in range(1, len(message) + 1):
temp += message[i - 1]
if i % split_size == 0:
array.append(temp)
temp = ""
print(array)
Output: ['lor', 'em ', 'ips']

- 313
- 1
- 4
- 14
Here's another possible solution to the given problem:
def split_by_length(text, width):
width = max(1, width)
chunk = ""
for v in text:
chunk += v
if len(chunk) == width:
yield chunk
chunk = ""
if chunk:
yield chunk
if __name__ == '__main__':
x = "123456789"
for i in range(20):
print(i, list(split_by_length(x, i)))
Output:
0 ['1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9']
1 ['1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9']
2 ['12', '34', '56', '78', '9']
3 ['123', '456', '789']
4 ['1234', '5678', '9']
5 ['12345', '6789']
6 ['123456', '789']
7 ['1234567', '89']
8 ['12345678', '9']
9 ['123456789']
10 ['123456789']
11 ['123456789']
12 ['123456789']
13 ['123456789']
14 ['123456789']
15 ['123456789']
16 ['123456789']
17 ['123456789']
18 ['123456789']
19 ['123456789']

- 9,632
- 9
- 59
- 117
The kiddy way
def wrap(string, max_width):
i=0
strings = []
s = ""
for x in string:
i+=1
if i == max_width:
s = s + x
strings.append(s)
s = ""
i = 0
else:
s = s + x
strings.append(s)
return strings
wrap('ABCDEFGHIJKLIMNOQRSTUVWXYZ',4)
# output: ['ABCD', 'EFGH', 'IJKL', 'IMNO', 'QRST', 'UVWX', 'YZ']

- 53
- 1
- 4