Splitting String to List of Characters Python (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 04 Feb, 2025

The task of splitting a string into a list of characters in Python involves breaking down a string into its individual components, where each character becomes an element in a list. **For example, given the string s = "GeeksforGeeks", the task is to split the string, resulting in a list like this: ['G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's', 'f', 'o', 'r', 'G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's'].

Using list comprehension

List comprehension is a efficient way to create a new list by iterating over an iterable .When splitting a string into characters, list comprehension is particularly useful due to its clean syntax and fast performance .

Python `

s = "GeeksforGeeks"

res = [char for char in s] print(res)

`

Output

['G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's', 'f', 'o', 'r', 'G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's']

**Explanation: list comprehension iterate over each character in the string **s, creating a new list where each character from the string is added as an individual element.

Using list()

list() constructor convert any iterable into a list. By passing a string to list(), it efficiently breaks the string into its individual characters, making it one of the simplest and most efficient ways to split a string into a list.

Python `

s = "GeeksforGeeks"

res = list(s) print(res)

`

Output

['G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's', 'f', 'o', 'r', 'G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's']

**Explanation: list() convert the string s into a list, where each character from the string becomes an individual element in the list.

Using map()

map() applies a given function to each item of an iterable and returns an iterator. While map() can be used for more complex transformations, it's also a good option for splitting a string into characters when combined with the str() function.

Python `

s = "GeeksforGeeks"

res = list(map(str, s)) print(res)

`

Output

['G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's', 'f', 'o', 'r', 'G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's']

**Explanation: map() apply the **str**function to each character of the string s, then converts the result into a list.

Using for loop

For loop is a traditional approach where we iterate over each character in the string and append it to a list. This method is more manual but can be used effectively, especially when we need to add additional logic inside the loop.

Python `

s = "GeeksforGeeks" res = []

for char in s: res.append(char) print(res)

`

Output

['G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's', 'f', 'o', 'r', 'G', 'e', 'e', 'k', 's']

**Explanation: for loop iterates over each character in the string **s and appends it to the list res. After the loop, the list res contains the individual characters of the string.