Split a string and count the results in Python

Split a string and count the results in Python #

To split a string and count the results:

1. Use the str.split() method to split the string into a list of strings.
2. Pass the list to the len() function to get the count of items in the list.

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my_str = 'a,b,c,d'

my_list = my_str.split(',')
print(my_list)  # 👉️ ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

results_count = len(my_list)
print(results_count)  # 👉️ 4

The len() function returns the length (the number of items) of an object.

The example splits the string on each occurrence of a comma, but you could use any other separator.

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# 👇️ split string on spaces
my_str = 'a b c d'

my_list = my_str.split(' ')
print(my_list)  # 👉️ ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

results_count = len(my_list)
print(results_count)  # 👉️ 4

The str.split() method splits the original string into a list of substrings using a delimiter.

The method takes the following 2 parameters:

If the separator is not found in the string, a list containing only 1 element is returned.

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my_str = 'abcd'

my_list = my_str.split(' ')
print(my_list)  # 👉️ ['abcd']

results_count = len(my_list)
print(results_count)  # 👉️ 1

If your string starts with or ends with the specific separator, you would get empty string elements in the list.

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my_str = '-a-b-c-d-'

my_list = my_str.split('-')
print(my_list)  # 👉️ ['', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', '']

results_count = len(my_list)
print(results_count)  # 👉️ 6

You can use the filter() function to remove any empty strings from the list.

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my_str = '-a-b-c-d-'

my_list = list(filter(None, my_str.split('-')))
print(my_list)  # 👉️ ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

results_count = len(my_list)
print(results_count)  # 👉️ 6

The filter function takes a function and an iterable as arguments and constructs an iterator from the elements of the iterable for which the function returns a truthy value.

All values that are not truthy are considered falsy. The falsy values in Python are:

• constants defined to be falsy: None and False.
• 0 (zero) of any numeric type
• empty sequences and collections: "" (empty string), () (empty tuple), [] (empty list), {} (empty dictionary), set() (empty set), range(0) (empty range).

Note that the filter() function returns a filter object, so we have to use the list() class to convert the filter object to a list.