How to split the element of a given NumPy array with spaces?

Last Updated : 27 Sep, 2025

In NumPy, string operations can be performed directly on arrays of strings using functions from the numpy.char module. One useful function is numpy.char.split(), which splits each element of a string array into a list of words based on a given separator (default is whitespace).

In the below example, we split a single string in a NumPy array into words separated by spaces.

Python 
import numpy as np
arr = np.array(['Hello World'])
res = np.char.split(arr)
print(res)

Output
[list(['Hello', 'World'])]

Explanation: The string "Hello World" is split into two words: "Hello" and "World".

Syntax

numpy.char.split(arr, sep=None, maxsplit=None)

Parameters:

  • arr: Input array of strings.
  • sep: Separator to split on (default is space).
  • maxsplit: Maximum number of splits to perform.

Return Value: Returns an array of lists where each string is split into words.

Examples

Example 1: In this example, we split a string containing several programming languages.

Python 
import numpy as np
arr = np.array(['PHP C# Python C Java C++'])
res = np.char.split(arr)
print(res)

Output
[list(['PHP', 'C#', 'Python', 'C', 'Java', 'C++'])]

Example 2: In this example, we split a sentence "Geeks For Geeks" into individual words.

Python 
import numpy as np
arr = np.array(['Geeks For Geeks'])
res = np.char.split(arr)
print(res)

Output
[list(['Geeks', 'For', 'Geeks'])]

Example 3: Here, we split a string containing subject names separated by spaces.

Python 
import numpy as np
arr = np.array(['DBMS OOPS DS'])
res = np.char.split(arr)
print(res)

Output
[list(['DBMS', 'OOPS', 'DS'])]
Comment

Explore