Question

Assume the following statement appears in a program: days = 'Monday Tuesday Wednesday' Write a statement that splits the string, creating the following list: ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday']

Short answer

Answer: You can use the `split()` method on the string, which will split the string at white spaces by default and store the resulting substrings in a list. Here's an example: ```python days = 'Monday Tuesday Wednesday' day_list = days.split() print(day_list) ``` This will output: `['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday']`

Step-by-step solution

Understand the input and desired output

The input is a string that contains the days 'Monday Tuesday Wednesday' separated by spaces. The desired output is a list containing each day as an individual element: ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday'].

Use the split() method

We can use the `split()` method on the string to create the output list. By default, the method splits the string at whitespace, so no additional argument is needed. Code: days = 'Monday Tuesday Wednesday' day_list = days.split()

Print the result

After splitting the string and storing it in 'day_list', we can print the list to check that it contains the correct elements. Code: print(day_list)

Key concepts

String Manipulation

When working with textual data in programming, there's a common need to 'manipulate' strings, that is, to modify or interpret them in various ways to achieve the desired outcome. This could involve anything from chopping up a sentence into words, changing the text's case, or finding and replacing snippets of the string. In Python, strings are immutable, which means they can't be changed after they are created. However, we can perform operations that return a new string reflecting the desired changes.

One such operation is the split() method, which we'll delve into in detail. However, it's worth noting that string manipulation also encompasses a wide array of methods like strip() for removing leading and trailing characters, replace() for replacing parts of the string, and slicing using brackets [] to obtain substrings. Being deft with these tools is a powerful asset in a programmer's toolkit as it allows for easy and efficient text processing.

Python Split Function

The split() function in Python is a string method that is incredibly handy for dividing a string into a list of substrings. The basic syntax is string.split(separator, maxsplit), where 'separator' is the character or the sequence of characters where the split should occur. If no 'separator' is specified, the default behavior is to split at any whitespace. The 'maxsplit' parameter is optional and specifies how many splits to do; without it, the method splits at all occurrences of the separator.

Consider the following scenario:

data = 'A B C D'data.split()

The above code will output ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']. The simplicity of the split() function becomes evident—just one line of code is required to separate words from a block of text.

List Creation in Python

Lists are a fundamental data structure in Python that are mutable, ordered, and can hold a collection of items of various data types. The process of creating a list is intuitive and flexible. You can start with an empty list and append items to it, or you can create a list with initial values. Lists are delimited by square brackets [], and the elements inside are separated by commas.

Building a list from a string using the split() function merges the concepts of string manipulation and list creation:

text = 'apple orange banana'fruits = text.split()

In this example, 'fruits' becomes ['apple', 'orange', 'banana']. This concept is essential for collecting and organizing data within programs, making tasks like reading a sentence and identifying individual words or storing structured data much more manageable.