How do I concatenate items in a list to a single string?
PythonStringListConcatenationPython Problem Overview
How do I concatenate a list of strings into a single string?
['this', 'is', 'a', 'sentence'] → 'this-is-a-sentence'
Python Solutions
Solution 1 - Python
Use str.join
:
>>> sentence = ['this', 'is', 'a', 'sentence']
>>> '-'.join(sentence)
'this-is-a-sentence'
>>> ' '.join(sentence)
'this is a sentence'
Solution 2 - Python
A more generic way to convert python lists to strings would be:
>>> my_lst = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> my_lst_str = ''.join(map(str, my_lst))
>>> print(my_lst_str)
'12345678910'
Solution 3 - Python
It's very useful for beginners to know why join is a string method.
It's very strange at the beginning, but very useful after this.
The result of join is always a string, but the object to be joined can be of many types (generators, list, tuples, etc).
.join
is faster because it allocates memory only once. Better than classical concatenation (see, extended explanation).
Once you learn it, it's very comfortable and you can do tricks like this to add parentheses.
>>> ",".join("12345").join(("(",")"))
Out:
'(1,2,3,4,5)'
>>> list = ["(",")"]
>>> ",".join("12345").join(list)
Out:
'(1,2,3,4,5)'
Solution 4 - Python
Edit from the future: Please don't use the answer below. This function was removed in Python 3 and Python 2 is dead. Even if you are still using Python 2 you should write Python 3 ready code to make the inevitable upgrade easier.
Although @Burhan Khalid's answer is good, I think it's more understandable like this:
from str import join
sentence = ['this','is','a','sentence']
join(sentence, "-")
The second argument to join() is optional and defaults to " ".
Solution 5 - Python
list_abc = ['aaa', 'bbb', 'ccc']
string = ''.join(list_abc)
print(string)
>>> aaabbbccc
string = ','.join(list_abc)
print(string)
>>> aaa,bbb,ccc
string = '-'.join(list_abc)
print(string)
>>> aaa-bbb-ccc
string = '\n'.join(list_abc)
print(string)
>>> aaa
>>> bbb
>>> ccc
Solution 6 - Python
We can also use Python's reduce function:
from functools import reduce
sentence = ['this','is','a','sentence']
out_str = str(reduce(lambda x,y: x+"-"+y, sentence))
print(out_str)
Solution 7 - Python
We can specify how we have to join the string. Instead of '-', we can use ' '
sentence = ['this','is','a','sentence']
s=(" ".join(sentence))
print(s)
Solution 8 - Python
If you want to generate a string of strings separated by commas in final result, you can use something like this:
sentence = ['this','is','a','sentence']
sentences_strings = "'" + "','".join(sentence) + "'"
print (sentences_strings) # you will get "'this','is','a','sentence'"
Solution 9 - Python
If you have mixed content list. And want to stringify it. Here is one way:
Consider this list:
>>> aa
[None, 10, 'hello']
Convert it to string:
>>> st = ', '.join(map(str, map(lambda x: f'"{x}"' if isinstance(x, str) else x, aa)))
>>> st = '[' + st + ']'
>>> st
'[None, 10, "hello"]'
If required, convert back to list:
>>> ast.literal_eval(st)
[None, 10, 'hello']
Solution 10 - Python
def eggs(someParameter):
del spam[3]
someParameter.insert(3, ' and cats.')
spam = ['apples', 'bananas', 'tofu', 'cats']
eggs(spam)
spam =(','.join(spam))
print(spam)
Solution 11 - Python
Without .join() method you can use this method:
my_list=["this","is","a","sentence"]
concenated_string=""
for string in range(len(my_list)):
if string == len(my_list)-1:
concenated_string+=my_list[string]
else:
concenated_string+=f'{my_list[string]}-'
print([concenated_string])
>>> ['this-is-a-sentence']
So, range based for loop in this example , when the python reach the last word of your list, it should'nt add "-" to your concenated_string. If its not last word of your string always append "-" string to your concenated_string variable.