How to convert list to string - 【StackMirror】|python|string|list

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How to convert list into a string?

How can I convert a list to a string using Python?

2011-04-11 08:51
by Nm3

str(anything) will convert any python object into its string representation. Similar to the output you get if you do print(anything), but as a string - ToolmakerSteve 2016-01-27 20:17

This is the top Google search result (in 2017) for how to convert a list to a string in Python. It's embarrassing that the question is flagged out the wazoo for being a so-called duplicate. Thousands of people finding this answer via Google, surely, must trump whatever 'dogbane' and whoever else felt back in 2011 when they flagged this? It's a huge hole in the StackOverflow moderator usefulness - Emmel 2017-02-28 21:14

@Emmel Same here. But more so, I always wondered why a lot of questions are marked as duplicate when they aren't. And they are usually marked by users who didn't even read the questions properly and linked them to a "duplicate" that answers a completely different question - Sayyora 2018-02-05 14:10

But it is a duplicate. Google search result ranking doesn't change that - Alex Hall 2018-08-23 10:43

So one way to make this different than that one is to suggest using json to do it like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17796446/convert-a-list-to-a-string-and-back. Using json easily allows the reverse process (string to list) to take place. But the OP really did need to explain themselves. Is it for display only or some other purpose - demongolem 2018-10-02 16:58

1005

By using ''.join

list1 = ['1', '2', '3']
str1 = ''.join(list1)

Or if the list is of integers, convert the elements before joining them.

list1 = [1, 2, 3]
str1 = ''.join(str(e) for e in list1)

2011-04-11 08:52
by Senthil Kumaran

@SenthilKumaran If the resulting string requires separate items such as when passing a list of files to a process, then "" has to be changed to " " (notice the space between the quotes). Otherwise, you end up with a contiguous string ("123" instead of "1 2 3"). This is OK if that was the intention, but needs to be mentioned in the response - Bogdan 2016-05-09 19:43

Just gonna point out that the second form works fine on almost any (single-depth) list - The Nate 2016-08-29 04:03

I was looking for this here and found it elsewhere: If you want to have a newline for every list element (might be useful for long-string lists): print ("\n".join(['I', 'would', 'expect', 'multiple', 'lines']))Honeybear 2018-03-03 11:55

The question may be a duplicate but the answer here is better than there. :) Plus this pops up as the top result on google unlike the other. (which I've noticed a lot with dupes - codehelp4 2018-09-19 01:14

Agree with @Bogdan. This answer creates a string in which the list elements are joined together with no whitespace or comma in between. You can use ', '.join(list1) to join the elements of the list with comma and whitespace or ' '.join(to) to join with only white spac - R.S.K 2018-09-28 06:32

200

>>> L = [1,2,3]       
>>> " ".join(str(x) for x in L)
'1 2 3'

2011-04-11 08:53
by Andrey Sboev

L = ['L','O','L']
makeitastring = ''.join(map(str, L))

2011-04-11 08:56
by Nathan

it throw TypeError exception,like this: In [15]: L=['1','2','3']

In [16]: print ''.join(map(str,L))

TypeError Traceback (most recent call last) in () ----> 1 print ''.join(map(str,L))

TypeError: 'str' object is not callabl - wgzhao 2013-01-06 11:44

Since it wasn't specific in the question... If you want to preserve single string quotes on your list items (for sending a query to SQL, for instance), you can do something like this.

x = [1,2,3] y = "'" + "','".join(map(str, x)) + "'"tandy 2015-03-05 16:29

Nice use of ma - Avi Tevet 2018-04-20 23:38