Python | Split String and Keep Whitespace : Shubham Sayon
by: Shubham Sayon
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Summary: To split a string and keep the delimiters/separators, you can use one of the following methods: (i) Using the regex package and its functions. (ii) Using a list comprehension.
Minimal Example
import re
text = "Python Java C++ C Golang"
# Method 1
print(re.split(r'(\s+)', text))
# Method 2
print(re.split('([^a-zA-Z0-9+]+)', text))
# Method 3
res = re.compile(r'(\S+)').split(text)
print([x for x in res if x != ''])
# Method 4
res = [u for x in text.split(' ') for u in (x, ' ')]
res.pop()
print(res)
Problem Formulation
Problem: Given a string in Python. How to split the string and also keep the spaces?
Example
Consider that there’s a given string as shown in this example below and you need to split it such that the spaces present between the words are also stored along with the word characters in a list. Please follow the example given below to get an overview of our problem statement.
# Input text = "Python Java C++ C Golang" # Output ['Python', ' ', 'Java', ' ', 'C++', ' ', 'C', ' ', 'Golang']
Graphical Illustration of the problem:
Now that we have an overview of our problem, let us dive into the solutions without any delay!
Method 1: Use Regular Expressions (RegEx)
Method 1.1: Using re.split
One of the ways in which we can split the given string along with the spaces is to import the regex module and then split the string using the re.split() function and passing a special pattern within it as shown in the solution below.
import re text = "Python Java C++ C Golang" print(re.split(r'(\s+)', text))
Output
['Python', ' ', 'Java', ' ', 'C++', ' ', 'C', ' ', 'Golang']
Let us examine and discuss the expression used here:
\s+is a special sequence that returns a match where it does not find any word characters in the given string. Here it is used to find the spaces while splitting the string.()is used to ensure that the separators/delimiters (in this case space) along with the word characters are considered and preserved in the resultant list.
Method 1.2: Using [^]
Another way of splitting the string using regex is to split it using the split() function along with the ([^a-zA-Z0-9]+) as the pattern within it. Let’s have a look at the code and then we will dive deep into the pattern used here.
Code:
import re
text = "Python Java C++ C Golang"
print(re.split('([^a-zA-Z0-9+]+)', text))
Output
['Python', ' ', 'Java', ' ', 'C++', ' ', 'C', ' ', 'Golang']
Let us examine the expression used here:
()ensures that the spaces (i.e. the delimiter) are preserved while splitting the string.[]is used to match a set of characters within the string.[^a-zA-Z0-9+]+is used to return a match for any character EXCEPT alphabets (both Capital Letters and Small Letters), Numbers and a+sign i.e. it is simply used to find spaces which is the delimiter/separator in this case.
Method 1.3: Use re.compile and split
Approach: Use the compile method of the regex library to split at non whitespace characters.
Code:
import re text = "Python Java C++ C Golang" res = re.compile(r'(\S+)').split(text) print([x for x in res if x != ''])
Output
['Python', ' ', 'Java', ' ', 'C++', ' ', 'C', ' ', 'Golang']
Note: The method re.compile(pattern) returns a regular expression object from the pattern that provides basic regex methods such as pattern.search(string), pattern.match(string), and pattern.findall(string). The explicit two-step approach of (1) compiling and (2) searching the pattern is more efficient than calling, say, search(pattern, string) at once, if you match the same pattern multiple times because it avoids redundant compilations of the same pattern.
Recommended Read: Python Regex Compile
Do you want to master the regex superpower? Check out my new book The Smartest Way to Learn Regular Expressions in Python with the innovative 3-step approach for active learning: (1) study a book chapter, (2) solve a code puzzle, and (3) watch an educational chapter video.
Method 2: Using a List Comprehension
Another way to approach this problem is to use a list comprehension containing a couple of for loops. One of the loops allows you to split the given string using space and iterate through each item of the list returned by the split method. Another loop allows you to append the spaces along with each item once you have split the string.
A problem here would be the last item generated by the list comprehension which will be an extra space appended after the last split string. You can eliminate it using the pop() function.
Code:
text = "Python Java C++ C Golang"
res = [u for x in text.split(' ') for u in (x, ' ')]
res.pop()
print(res)
Output
['Python', ' ', 'Java', ' ', 'C++', ' ', 'C', ' ', 'Golang']
Recommended Read: Python List pop()
Conclusion
Therefore, in this article, we discussed various methods to split a string and store the word characters along with the spaces. I highly recommend you to read our Blog Tutorial if you want to master the concept of Python regular expressions.
I hope you enjoyed this article and it helps you in your Python coding journey. Please subscribe and stay tuned for more interesting articles!
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December 03, 2022 at 07:33PM
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