List printing every single character from a list [closed]-CodePudding

I have a variable that retrieves a list of items that could be 1 or more but when I have only 1 and I try to print it I get every single character printed individually for example, let say that my list only has this:

list = ['apple']
for x in list:
  print(x)

when i run it i get this:

a
p
p
l
e

but if i have something like this:

list = ['apple', 'lemon']
for x in list:
  print(x)

and i run it, I get it printed correctly like this:

apple
lemon

and when i use the len function to check the item content i get the total character for the one single item, like in apple if i do this:

list = 'apple'
print(len(list))

i get this:

but if i get more than one value inside the list i get the total items inside the lists like this:

list = ['apple', 'lemon']
print(len(list))

and i run it i get:

so my question is, how can i solve this problem?

CodePudding user response：

In the first case you used list as a variable name for the string apple. The length of this string is 5.

In the second case you used list as a variable name for the list ['apple', 'lemon']. The length of this list is 2.

CodePudding user response：

When you have 1 and only 1 element you're using a string instead of a list. list = 'apple' should be list = ['apple']

Both lists and strings and lists can be iterated over.

When you iterate over a list of strings and print out every element you're printing out strings.

for s in ['abc', 'def', 'ghi']:
    print(s)

When you iterate over a string and print every element you're printing out every character.

for c in 'abcdefg'
    print(c)

In your investigation when looking at the length you're looking at the length of a string instead of a list. You can validate this by checking the type of the variable.

# This isn't actually a list
list = 'apple'
print(len(list))
# 5
print(type(list))
# <class 'string'>

If you place the string within a list you will get the behavior you expect.

list = ['apple']
print(len(list))
# 5
print(type(list))
# <class 'list'>