Python – Extract words from given string



Python | Extract words from given string

We sometimes come through situations where we require to get all the words present in the string, this can be a tedious task done using the native method. Hence having shorthands to perform this task is always useful. Additionally, this article also includes the cases in which punctuation marks have to be ignored.
Method #1 : Using split()
Using the split function, we can split the string into a list of words and this is the most generic and recommended method if one wished to accomplish this particular task. But the drawback is that it fails in cases the string contains punctuation marks.

# Python3 code to demonstrate
# to extract words from string
# using split()
# initializing string 
test_string = "Geeksforgeeks is best Computer Science Portal"
# printing original string
print ("The original string is : " +  test_string)
# using split()
# to extract words from string
res = test_string.split()
# printing result
print ("The list of words is : " +  str(res))
Output:
The original string is : Geeksforgeeks is best Computer Science Portal
The list of words is : [‘Geeksforgeeks’, ‘is’, ‘best’, ‘Computer’, ‘Science’, ‘Portal’]

Method #2 : Using regex( findall() )
In the cases which contain all the special characters and punctuation marks, as discussed above, the conventional method of finding words in string using split can fail and hence requires regular expressions to perform this task. findall function returns the list after filtering the string and extracting words ignoring punctuation marks.

# Python3 code to demonstrate
# to extract words from string
# using regex( findall() )
import re
# initializing string 
test_string = "Geeksforgeeks,    is best @# Computer Science Portal.!!!"
# printing original string
print ("The original string is : " +  test_string)
# using regex( findall() )
# to extract words from string
res = re.findall(r'\w+', test_string)
# printing result
print ("The list of words is : " +  str(res))
Output:
The original string is : Geeksforgeeks, is best @# Computer Science Portal.!!!
The list of words is : [‘Geeksforgeeks’, ‘is’, ‘best’, ‘Computer’, ‘Science’, ‘Portal’]

Method #3 : Using regex() + string.punctuation
This method also used regular expressions, but string function of getting all the punctuations is used to ignore all the punctuation marks and get the filtered result string.

# Python3 code to demonstrate
# to extract words from string
# using regex() + string.punctuation
import re
import string
# initializing string 
test_string = "Geeksforgeeks,    is best @# Computer Science Portal.!!!"
# printing original string
print ("The original string is : " +  test_string)
# using regex() + string.punctuation
# to extract words from string
res = re.sub('['+string.punctuation+']', '', test_string).split()
# printing result
print ("The list of words is : " +  str(res))
Output:
The original string is : Geeksforgeeks, is best @# Computer Science Portal.!!!
The list of words is : [‘Geeksforgeeks’, ‘is’, ‘best’, ‘Computer’, ‘Science’, ‘Portal’]

 

Last Updated on October 24, 2021 by admin

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