How do I strip only the string part from a list in Python?

Question

I have a list that looks like:

{
    'J2EE': 0.0202219636,
    'financial': 0.2439565346,
    'Guru': 0.0202219636,
    'AWS': 0.0202219636,
    'next generation': 0.12072663160000001,
    'Machine Learning': 0.2025762767,
    'technology': 0.066936981
}

How do I extract only the text parts and make my list look like:

['J2EE', 'financial', 'Guru', 'AWS', ...]

Should I use Regular expressions?

I am new to Python, also, I mistook dictionary to be a list. Sorry. I could not figure out anything. — The Doctor, Jul 07 '17 at 12:26
Sometimes the stackoverflow community can be a bit unwelcoming to newcomers. Don't get discouraged, you'll get a lot of great answers if you follow the community guidelines for asking questions. — BoboDarph, Jul 07 '17 at 12:30

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 07 '17 at 12:25

What you have there is a dictionary, not a list, and what you want are the keys:

your_dict = {'J2EE': 0.0202219636, 'financial': 0.2439565346, 'Guru': 0.0202219636, 'AWS': 0.0202219636, 'next generation': 0.12072663160000001, 'Machine Learning': 0.2025762767, 'technology': 0.066936981}
your_dict_keys = your_dict.keys()

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 07 '17 at 12:27

1

I doubt it, but if you really want it in the form of {'J2EE','financial','Guru','AWS',....} use set(dict)

answered Jul 07 '17 at 12:27

Flomp

524
4
17

This `set` is quite unnecessary. Dictionary keys are already unique. Simpler to use `dict.keys()`. – Fejs Jul 07 '17 at 12:31
True, but OP specified the output to be a set. Although probably by mistake. – Flomp Jul 07 '17 at 12:33

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 07 '17 at 12:29

1

As noticed by brittenb in his comment, the data structure in your example is in fact a type we call a dictionary in Python. See https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries for further details.

Getting the list of keys of a dictionary is done by calling

list(dict.keys())

This is what calling it on your example would look like:

test = {'J2EE': 0.0202219636, 'financial': 0.2439565346, 'Guru': 0.0202219636, 'AWS': 0.0202219636, 'next generation': 0.12072663160000001, 'Machine Learning': 0.2025762767, 'technology': 0.066936981}
list(test.keys())
>>>['financial', 'next generation', 'Guru', 'technology', 'J2EE', 'Machine Learning', 'AWS']

answered Jul 07 '17 at 12:29

BoboDarph

2,751
1
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Good approach, but `list()` call is unnecessary here, since `dict.keys()` already returns a list. – Fejs Jul 07 '17 at 12:32
In python 3 it returns a dict_keys class object. test.keys().__class__ – BoboDarph Jul 07 '17 at 12:34
You're right, I'm using Python2. Forgot about this difference. – Fejs Jul 07 '17 at 12:37

How do I strip only the string part from a list in Python?

3 Answers3