How to split a string into an array of characters in Python?

Question

I\'ve tried to look around the web for answers to splitting a string into an array of characters but I can\'t seem to find a simple method

str.split(//)

Answer 1

The task boils down to iterating over characters of the string and collecting them into a list. The most naïve solution would look like

result = []
for character in string:
    result.append(character)

Of course, it can be shortened to just

result = [character for character in string]

but there still are shorter solutions that do the same thing.

list constructor can be used to convert any iterable (iterators, lists, tuples, string etc.) to list.

>>> list('abc')
['a', 'b', 'c']

The big plus is that it works the same in both Python 2 and Python 3.

Also, starting from Python 3.5 (thanks to the awesome PEP 448) it's now possible to build a list from any iterable by unpacking it to an empty list literal:

>>> [*'abc']
['a', 'b', 'c']

This is neater, and in some cases more efficient than calling list constructor directly.

I'd advise against using map-based approaches, because map does not return a list in Python 3. See How to use filter, map, and reduce in Python 3.