Python – Why is it string.join(list) instead of list.join(string)

listpythonstring

This has always confused me. It seems like this would be nicer:

my_list = ["Hello", "world"]
print(my_list.join("-"))
# Produce: "Hello-world"

Than this:

my_list = ["Hello", "world"]
print("-".join(my_list))
# Produce: "Hello-world"

Is there a specific reason it is like this?

Best Answer

It's because any iterable can be joined (e.g, list, tuple, dict, set), but its contents and the "joiner" must be strings.

For example:

'_'.join(['welcome', 'to', 'stack', 'overflow'])
'_'.join(('welcome', 'to', 'stack', 'overflow'))

'welcome_to_stack_overflow'

Using something other than strings will raise the following error:

TypeError: sequence item 0: expected str instance, int found
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