Python - Check for spaces in string

Sometimes, while working with strings in Python, we need to determine if a string contains any spaces. This is a simple problem where we need to check for the presence of space characters within the string. Let's discuss different methods to solve this problem.

Using 'in' operator

'in' operator is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to check for spaces in a string. It checks whether a specific character or substring is present in the string.

s = "geeks for geeks"
res = " " in s
print(res) 

True

Explanation:

• We define the string 's'.
• The 'in' operator checks if there is a space in 's'.
• The result is stored in res and printed.

Using any() and isspace()

We can use the any() function along with the isspace() method to check for spaces in a string. This method iterates through all the characters in the string and returns True if any of them is a space.

s = "geeks for geeks"
res = any(c.isspace() for c in s)
print(res) 

True

Explanation:

• We define the string 's'.
• The isspace() method checks if each character in the string is a space.
• The any() function returns True if any character is a space.

Using count()

count() method can be used to check how many spaces are present in a string. If the count is greater than 0, the string contains spaces.

s = "geeks for geeks"
res = s.count(" ") > 0
print(res) 

True

Explanation:

• We use the count() method to count the number of spaces in the string txt.
• The result is checked against 0 to determine if there are any spaces.

Using regular expressions

We can use the re.search() method to check for spaces in the string.

import re
s = "geeks for geeks"
res = bool(re.search(r"\s", s))
print(res) 

True

Explanation:

• We import the re module and define the string 's'.
• re.search() method looks for any whitespace character in the string.
• result is converted to a boolean using the bool function and printed.

Using a loop

We can manually iterate through the string using a for loop to check for spaces.

s = "geeks for geeks"  
res = False  # Initializing a variable to store the result
# Iterating through each character in the string
for c in s:
    if c == " ":  # Checking if the current character is a space
        res = True  # Setting the result to True if a space is found
        break  # Exiting the loop as we found a space
print(res) 

True

Explanation:

• We initialize the variable res to False.
• Using a loop, we iterate through each character in 's'.
• If a space is found, we set res to True and break the loop.