CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonstringlistsplit
iFunction
iFunction

Reputation: 1268

How to split strings inside a list by whitespace characters

So stdin returns a string of text into a list, and multiple lines of text are all list elements. How do you split them all into single words?

mylist = ['this is a string of text \n', 'this is a different string of text \n', 'and for good measure here is another one \n']

wanted output:

newlist = ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string', 'of', 'text', 'this', 'is', 'a', 'different', 'string', 'of', 'text', 'and', 'for', 'good', 'measure', 'here', 'is', 'another', 'one']

Upvotes: 14

Views: 48687

Answers (4)

Georgy
Georgy

Reputation: 13687

Alternatively, you can map str.split method to every string inside the list and then chain the elements from the resulting lists together by itertools.chain.from_iterable:

from itertools import chain

mylist = ['this is a string of text \n', 'this is a different string of text \n', 'and for good measure here is another one \n']
result = list(chain.from_iterable(map(str.split, mylist)))
print(result)
# ['this', 'is', 'a', 'string', 'of', 'text', 'this', 'is', 'a', 'different', 'string', 'of', 'text', 'and', 'for', 'good', 'measure', 'here', 'is', 'another', 'one']

Upvotes: 2

Ouss
Ouss

Reputation: 3855

Besides the list comprehension answer above that i vouch for, you could also do it in a for loop:

#Define the newlist as an empty list
newlist = list()
#Iterate over mylist items
for item in mylist:
 #split the element string into a list of words
 itemWords = item.split()
 #extend newlist to include all itemWords
 newlist.extend(itemWords)
print(newlist)

eventually your newlist will contain all split words that were in all elements in mylist

But the python list comprehension looks much nicer and you can do awesome things with it. Check here for more:

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/datastructures.html#list-comprehensions

Upvotes: 3

SollyBunny
SollyBunny

Reputation: 846

You could just do:

words = str(list).split()

So you turn the list into a string then split it by a space bar. Then you can remove the /n's by doing:

words.replace("/n", "")

Or if you want to do it in one line:

words = str(str(str(list).split()).replace("/n", "")).split()

Just saying this may not work in python 2

Upvotes: 6

willeM_ Van Onsem
willeM_ Van Onsem

Reputation: 476528

You can use simple list comprehension, like:

newlist = [word for line in mylist for word in line.split()]

This generates:

>>> [word for line in mylist for word in line.split()]
['this', 'is', 'a', 'string', 'of', 'text', 'this', 'is', 'a', 'different', 'string', 'of', 'text', 'and', 'for', 'good', 'measure', 'here', 'is', 'another', 'one']

Upvotes: 23

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