In Python, the str.splitlines() method is used to split a string into a list of lines. This method is particularly useful for processing multiline strings, as it separates the string at line breaks and returns a list containing each line as a separate element.

Syntax

str.splitlines(keepends=False)

• keepends (optional): A boolean value that determines whether to include the line break characters (\n, \r, or \r\n) at the end of each line in the resulting list.
  • If True, the line breaks are included in the resulting list.
  • If False (the default), the line breaks are not included.

Example Usage

1. Basic usage:

text = "Hello\nWorld\nPython"
result = text.splitlines()
print(result)  # Output: ['Hello', 'World', 'Python']

2. Including line breaks:

If you want to keep the line breaks in the resulting list, you can set keepends to True:

text = "Hello\nWorld\nPython"
result = text.splitlines(keepends=True)
print(result)  # Output: ['Hello\n', 'World\n', 'Python']

3. Different line break characters:

The splitlines() method can handle different types of line breaks, including carriage returns (\r) and a combination of both (\r\n):

text = "Line1\rLine2\r\nLine3"
result = text.splitlines()
print(result)  # Output: ['Line1', 'Line2', 'Line3']

4. Empty string:

If the string is empty, the result will be an empty list:

text = ""
result = text.splitlines()
print(result)  # Output: []

5. Trailing newlines:

If the string ends with a newline character, splitlines() will handle it gracefully. By default, the trailing newline is not included:

text = "Line1\nLine2\n"
result = text.splitlines()
print(result)  # Output: ['Line1', 'Line2']

Summary

• Use str.splitlines() to split a string into a list of lines based on line break characters.
• The keepends parameter allows you to control whether the line breaks are included in the resulting list.
• This method is useful for processing multiline strings, such as reading from text files or handling user input with multiple lines.