Iterate over words of a String in Python

In this article, we’ll explore different ways to iterate over the words in a string using Python.

Let's start with an example to iterate over words in a Python string:

s = "Learning Python is fun" for word in s.split(): print(word) 

Learning Python is fun 

Explanation: Split the string into words and loop through each word

Using split() to Separate Words

Python’s split() method allows us to split a string by whitespace and returns a list of words.

s = "Learning Python is fun" words = s.split() print(words) 

['Learning', 'Python', 'is', 'fun'] 

Explanation: Here, split() divides the string at each whitespace, resulting in a list of words.

Iterating Directly with for Loop

Once the string is split into words, we can iterate over each word using a for loop.

s = "Learning Python is fun" for word in s.split(): print(word) 

Learning Python is fun 

Explanation:

• s.split() returns ['Python', 'programming', 'is', 'powerful'].
• The for loop then iterates over this list, printing each word individually.

Using enumerate to Track Index

To keep track of the word position while iterating, we can use enumerate().

s = "Learning Python is fun" for index, word in enumerate(s.split()): print(f"Word {index + 1}: {word}") 

Word 1: Learning Word 2: Python Word 3: is Word 4: fun 

Explanation: enumerate() provides a counter (index) with each iteration, which helps in keeping track of word positions.

Handling Extra Spaces and Empty Words

Sometimes strings may have extra spaces. split() handles this well.

s = " Learning Python is fun " for word in s.split(): print(word) 

Learning Python is fun 

Explanation: split() automatically removes extra spaces.