Split string on whitespace in Python

Question

I'm looking for the Python equivalent of

String str = "many   fancy word \nhello    \thi";
String whiteSpaceRegex = "\\s";
String[] words = str.split(whiteSpaceRegex);

["many", "fancy", "word", "hello", "hi"]

score 1092 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 07 '22 at 09:25

1092

The str.split() method without an argument splits on whitespace:

>>> "many   fancy word \nhello    \thi".split()
['many', 'fancy', 'word', 'hello', 'hi']

edited Apr 07 '22 at 09:25

Boris Verkhovskiy

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answered Nov 13 '11 at 18:46

Sven Marnach

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Also good to know is that if you want the first word only (which means passing `1` as second argument), you can use `None` as the first argument: `s.split(None, 1)` – yak Nov 13 '11 at 19:00
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If you only want the first word, use *str.partition*. – Raymond Hettinger Nov 13 '11 at 19:11
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@yak : Can you please edit your comment. The way it sounds right now is that s.split(None, 1) would return 1st word only. It rather gives a list of size 2. First item being the first word, second - rest of the string. `s.split(None, 1)[0]` would return the first word only – user3527975 Feb 25 '16 at 21:43
Also the default split trims whitespace from either side so you don't have to call str.strip() e.g. `" asdf asdf \t\n ".split()` returns `['asdf', 'asdf']` – lee penkman Nov 24 '16 at 01:32
does `str.split()` do something like `re.split('\s+', string)` behind the scenes? – galois Dec 20 '16 at 23:05
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@galois No, it uses a custom implementation (which is faster). Also note that it handles leading and trailing whitespace differently. – Sven Marnach Dec 21 '16 at 07:53
Sven, in my case line, could contain words like `'Kishor Pawar' 'Sven Marnach'`. What would you suggest? – Kishor Pawar Jan 02 '19 at 07:46
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@KishorPawar It's rather unclear to me what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to split on whitespace, but disregard whitespace inside single-quoted substrings? If so, you can look into [`shlex.split()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/shlex.html#shlex.split), which may be what you are looking for. Otherwise I suggest asking a new question – you will get a much quicker and more detailed answer. – Sven Marnach Jan 02 '19 at 10:12
Thank you @SvenMarnach. You guessed the case correctly. I will take a look at shelx.split() – Kishor Pawar Jan 02 '19 at 10:22

score 82 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 13 '11 at 18:49

82

import re
s = "many   fancy word \nhello    \thi"
re.split('\s+', s)

answered Nov 13 '11 at 18:49

Óscar López

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this gives me a whitespace token at the end of the line. No idea why, the original line doesn't even have that. Maybe this ignores newline? – Gulzar Aug 26 '15 at 14:43
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@Gulzar do a `strip()` at the end – Óscar López Aug 26 '15 at 14:50
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Note that this is usually slower than str.split if performance is an issue. – Zhongjun 'Mark' Jin Aug 03 '16 at 19:39

digitalnomd · Answer 3 · 2017-02-21T14:25:20.957

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Using split() will be the most Pythonic way of splitting on a string.

It's also useful to remember that if you use split() on a string that does not have a whitespace then that string will be returned to you in a list.

Example:

>>> "ark".split()
['ark']

edited Feb 21 '17 at 14:25

answered Feb 21 '17 at 14:18

digitalnomd

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Avinash Raj · Answer 4 · 2017-11-29T07:39:27.593

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Another method through re module. It does the reverse operation of matching all the words instead of spitting the whole sentence by space.

>>> import re
>>> s = "many   fancy word \nhello    \thi"
>>> re.findall(r'\S+', s)
['many', 'fancy', 'word', 'hello', 'hi']

Above regex would match one or more non-space characters.

edited Nov 29 '17 at 07:39

answered Jun 17 '15 at 18:33

Avinash Raj

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Split string on whitespace in Python

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