Iterate over characters of a string in Python

In Python, while operating with String, one can do multiple operations on it. Let’s see how to iterate over the characters of a string in Python.

Example #1: Using simple iteration and range()

Python3

# Python program to iterate over characters of a string
 
# Code #1

string_name = "geeksforgeeks"
 
# Iterate over the string

for element in string_name:

    print(element, end=' ')

print("\n")
 
# Code #2

string_name = "GEEKS"
 
# Iterate over index

for element in range(0, len(string_name)):

    print(string_name[element])

Output:

g e e k s f o r g e e k s 

G
E
E
K
S

Code #1

Time complexity: O(n), where n is the length of the string.
Auxiliary space: O(1)

Code #2

Time complexity: O(n), where n is the length of the string.
Auxiliary space: O(1),

Example #2: Using enumerate() function

Python3

# Python program to iterate over characters of a string
 
string_name = "Geeks"
 
# Iterate over the string

for i, v in enumerate(string_name):

    print(v)

Output:

G
e
e
k
s

Time complexity: O(n) where n is the length of the string

Auxiliary space: O(1).

Example #3: Iterate characters in reverse order

Python3

# Python program to iterate over characters of a string
 
# Code #1

string_name = "GEEKS"
 
# slicing the string in reverse fashion 

for element in string_name[ : :-1]:

    print(element, end =' ')

print('\n')
 
# Code #2

string_name = "geeksforgeeks"
 
# Getting length of string

ran = len(string_name)
 
# using reversed() function

for element in reversed(range(0, ran)):

    print(string_name[element])

Output:

S K E E G 

s
k
e
e
g
r
o
f
s
k
e
e
g

Example #4: Iteration over particular set of element. Perform iteration over string_name by passing particular string index values.

Python3

# Python program to iterate over particular set of element.

string_name = "geeksforgeeks"
 
# string_name[start:end:step]

for element in string_name[0:8:1]: 

    print(element, end =' ')

Output:

g e e k s f o r

Example #5: Iterate characters using itertools

Alternatively, you can use the islice() function from itertools to iterate over the characters of a string. islice() returns an iterator that returns selected elements from the input iterator, allowing you to specify the start and end indices of the elements you want to iterate over. Here’s an example of how you can use islice() to iterate over the characters of a string:

Python3

import itertools
 
string = "hello"
 
# Create an iterator that returns the characters from index 1 to the end of the string

char_iter = itertools.islice(string, 0, None)
 
# Iterate over the selected characters

for char in char_iter:

    print(char)
 
#This code is contributed by Edula Vinay Kumar Reddy

Output

h
e
l
l
o

Time complexity: O(n)
Auxiliary Space: O(n)

Example #6: Using map() function

Approach:

Initialize string.
define a function that will print each character of the string in iteration.
Using map function on a string.
Since the map function applied function to each item in iterable in the loop and returns a new iterator that yields transformed on demand.

Python

# Python program to iterate over character
# of string in python
 
string_name = "geeks"
 
def h(x):

    print(x)
 
# Using map function

k = map(h, string_name)
 
for _ in k:

    pass