Borislav Hadzhiev
Wed Apr 20 2022·2 min read
Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw
The Python "AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'endswith'" occurs
when we call the endswith()
method on a list instead of a string. To solve the
error, call endswith()
on a string, e.g. by accessing the list at a specific
index or by iterating over the list.
Here is an example of how the error occurs.
my_list = ['google.com', 'example.com', 'example...'] # ⛔️ AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'endswith' if my_list.endswith('.com'): print('success')
We created a list with 3 elements and tried to call the endswith()
method on
the list which caused the error.
endswith()
method is string-specific, so we have to call it on a string, and not on a list object.One way to solve the error is to access the list at a specific index before
calling endswith()
.
my_list = ['google.com', 'example.com', 'example...'] if my_list[0].endswith('.com'): print('success')
We accessed the list element at index 0
and called the endswith()
method on
the string.
If you need to call the endswith()
method on each string in a list, use a
for
loop.
my_list = ['google.com', 'example.com', 'example...'] for word in my_list: if word.endswith('.com'): print('string ends with .com')
We used a for
loop to iterate over the list and called the endswith()
method
on each string.
The str.endswith
method returns True
if the string ends with the provided suffix, otherwise the
method returns False
.
endswith()
method on a list instead of a string.To solve the error, you either have to correct the assignment of the variable
and make sure to call endswith()
on a string, or call endswith()
on an
element in the list that is of type string
.
You can either access the list at a specific index, e.g. my_list[0]
or use a
for loop to iterate over the list if you have to call endswith()
on each
element.
You can view all the attributes an object has by using the dir()
function.
my_list = ['a', 'b', 'c'] # 👉️ [... 'append', 'clear', 'copy', 'count', 'extend', 'index', # 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort' ...] print(dir(my_list))
If you pass a class to the dir() function, it returns a list of names of the classes' attributes, and recursively of the attributes of its bases.
If you try to access any attribute that is not in this list, you would get the "AttributeError: list object has no attribute" error.
Since endswith()
is not a method implemented by lists, the error is caused.