In Python, the str.split() method is used to divide a string into a list of substrings based on a specified separator. By default, it splits the string at whitespace characters. This method is very useful for processing and analyzing text data.

Syntax

str.split(sep=None, maxsplit=-1)

• sep (optional): The delimiter (separator) string that determines where the splits should occur. If not specified, the method splits at any whitespace and discards empty strings from the result.
• maxsplit (optional): The maximum number of splits to perform. If specified, the resulting list will have at most maxsplit + 1 elements. The default value of -1 means "all occurrences."

Example Usage

1. Basic usage without a separator:

text = "Hello, how are you?"
result = text.split()
print(result)  # Output: ['Hello,', 'how', 'are', 'you?']

2. Using a specific separator:

text = "apple,banana,cherry"
result = text.split(",")
print(result)  # Output: ['apple', 'banana', 'cherry']

3. Using maxsplit:

text = "one two three four five"
result = text.split(" ", 2)  # Only split at the first two spaces
print(result)  # Output: ['one', 'two', 'three four five']

4. Handling multiple separators:

text = "one,two,,three,,four"
result = text.split(",")
print(result)  # Output: ['one', 'two', '', 'three', '', 'four']

5. Using whitespace as a separator:

text = "   Hello   World   "
result = text.split()  # Splits on whitespace by default
print(result)  # Output: ['Hello', 'World']

Summary

• Use str.split() to break a string into a list of substrings.
• You can specify a delimiter to control how the string is split and limit the number of splits with maxsplit.
• The method is versatile for different types of string processing tasks, particularly in data cleaning and preparation.