How do i read the first word of a file in python?

In this tutorial, we will be solving a program of python get first word in string. We will be discussing the solution to get first word in string in python in 3 ways.

• Method 1- Python get first word in string using split[]
• Method 2- Python get first word in string using for loop
• Method 3- Python get first word in string using Regex
• Conclusion

Method 1- Python get first word in string using split[]

The easiest way to get the first word in string in python is to access the first element of the list which is returned by the string split[] method.

String split[] method – The split[] method splits the string into a list. The string is broken down using a specific character which is provided as an input parameter. The space is taken as a default separator.

Syntax:-

String.split[seperator]

Python code:

# define the string
my_string = "Python Java Ruby JavaScript"
# Using split[] method
first_word = my_string.split[][0]
# Printing
print["First word in my string is", first_word]

Output:

First word in my string is Python

Read also: Python split string into list of characters in 4 Ways

Method 2- Python get first word in string using for loop

This is the simple approach, in which we will iterate over the characters of the string and concatenate the characters until we get the first occurrence of the space character.

Python code-

# define the string
my_string = "Python Java Ruby JavaScript"
# Using for loop
first_word = ''
for character in my_string:
    if character != ' ':
        first_word = first_word + character
    else:
        break
# Printing
print["First word in my string is", first_word]

Method 3- Python get first word in string using Regex

Regular Expression called regex is a specialized sequence of characters that helps to find a specific string or string set. Python re module provides support for regular expressions. To know about the re module of python you can visit here.

Similar to Python String split[] re module also has a split[] method which split the string at a specific pattern and returns those split strings into a list.

Syntax –

re.split[pattern, string]

To get first word in string we will split the string by space.  Hence the pattern to denote the space in regex is “s”.

Python Code-

# import regex module
import re
# define the string
my_string = "Python Java Ruby JavaScript"
# Using regex split[]
first_word = re.split["s", my_string][0]
# Printing
print["First word in my string is", first_word]

Output:

First word in my string is Python

Conclusion

Above we have solved python get first word in string in 3 ways. We can get first word in string in python by using string split[] method, re.split[] and by using for loop.