Python – How would you make a comma-separated string from a list of strings

listpythonstring

What would be your preferred way to concatenate strings from a sequence such that between every two consecutive pairs a comma is added. That is, how do you map, for instance, ['a', 'b', 'c'] to 'a,b,c'? (The cases ['s'] and [] should be mapped to 's' and '', respectively.)

I usually end up using something like ''.join(map(lambda x: x+',',l))[:-1], but also feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

Best Answer

my_list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
my_string = ','.join(my_list)

'a,b,c,d'

This won't work if the list contains integers

And if the list contains non-string types (such as integers, floats, bools, None) then do:

my_string = ','.join(map(str, my_list))

Related Solutions

Python – How to randomly select an item from a list

Use random.choice():

import random

foo = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
print(random.choice(foo))

For cryptographically secure random choices (e.g., for generating a passphrase from a wordlist), use secrets.choice():

import secrets

foo = ['battery', 'correct', 'horse', 'staple']
print(secrets.choice(foo))

secrets is new in Python 3.6. On older versions of Python you can use the random.SystemRandom class:

import random

secure_random = random.SystemRandom()
print(secure_random.choice(foo))

Python – How to split a list into evenly sized chunks

Here's a generator that yields the chunks you want:

def chunks(lst, n):
    """Yield successive n-sized chunks from lst."""
    for i in range(0, len(lst), n):
        yield lst[i:i + n]

import pprint
pprint.pprint(list(chunks(range(10, 75), 10)))
[[10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19],
 [20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29],
 [30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39],
 [40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49],
 [50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59],
 [60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69],
 [70, 71, 72, 73, 74]]

If you're using Python 2, you should use xrange() instead of range():

def chunks(lst, n):
    """Yield successive n-sized chunks from lst."""
    for i in xrange(0, len(lst), n):
        yield lst[i:i + n]

Also you can simply use list comprehension instead of writing a function, though it's a good idea to encapsulate operations like this in named functions so that your code is easier to understand. Python 3:

[lst[i:i + n] for i in range(0, len(lst), n)]

Python 2 version:

[lst[i:i + n] for i in xrange(0, len(lst), n)]

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Python – How to randomly select an item from a list

Python – How to split a list into evenly sized chunks

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