How to check if a character from a string is a letter, a number, a special character or a whitespace in python ?

Examples of how to check if a character from a string is a letter, a special character or a whitespace in python:

Create a string in python

Let's create for example the following sentence:

sentence = "   Hello World !"

Note:

type(sentence)

returns

str

Check character type

Check if a character is a letter

To check if a character is a letter, a solution is to use isalpha()

"a".isalpha()

gives

True

while

"1".isalpha()

gives

False

Check if a character is a number

To check if a character is a letter, a solution is to use isalpha()

"1".isdigit()

gives

True

while

"a".isdigit()

gives

False

Check if a character is a whitespace

To check if a character is a letter, a solution is to use isalpha()

"a".isalpha()

gives

True

Check if a character is a special character

To check if a character is a special character, a solution is to check if it is not a letter, a number or a whitespace:

if not ("!".isalpha() or "!".isdigit() or "!".isspace()):
        print("It is a special character")

gives

It is a special character

Another solution is to define a list of special characters:

sc_list = list('[@_!#$%^&*()<>?/\|}{~:]')

c = '!'

if c in sc_list:
         print("It is a special character")

gives also

It is a special character

Iterate over characters

for c in sentence:
    print(c)

gives

H
e
l
l
o

W
o
r
l
d

!

Now let's iterate over each character and check the type:

for c in sentence:
    if c.isalpha(): 
        print("character '{}' is a letter".format(c))
    else:
        if c.isdigit(): 
            print("character '{}' is a number".format(c))
        else:
            if c.isspace(): 
                print("character '{}' is a space".format(c))
            else:
                print("character '{}' is a special character".format(c))

gives then

character ' ' is a space
character ' ' is a space
character ' ' is a space
character 'H' is a letter
character 'e' is a letter
character 'l' is a letter
character 'l' is a letter
character 'o' is a letter
character ' ' is a space
character 'W' is a letter
character 'o' is a letter
character 'r' is a letter
character 'l' is a letter
character 'd' is a letter
character ' ' is a space
character '!' is a special character

References

• How can I check if character in a string is a letter?
• Program to check if a string contains any special character
• Python String isspace() Method
• How can I check if character in a string is a letter? (Python)
• Built-in Types