First of all, this is on Python 2.7x. For instance, we have this string: a = "This string" If we use split with an empty string "" or '' , it will return error . b = a.split("") ValueError Traceback (most recent call last): File " ", line ..., in ValueError: empty separator In JavaScript , we can directly use empty separator. Like so: a.split(""); // OUTPUT ["T", "h", "i", "s", " ", "s", "t", "r", "i", "n", "g"] That cannot be done in Python. Below is some of the methods in Python. Use list() Function b = list(a) print b ["T", "h", "i", "s", " ", "s", "t", "r", "i", "n", "g"] ➡️ list() documentation Use map() Function c = map(None, a) print c ["T", "h", ...