How to parse a string completely into a list

[john.ford at colorado.edu]

On Sep 25, 1:51 am, Tino Wildenhain <t... at wildenhain.de> wrote:
> john.f... at colorado.edu wrote:
> > On Sep 24, 10:12 pm, Matt Nordhoff <mnordh... at mattnordhoff.com> wrote:
> >> john.f... at colorado.edu wrote:
> >>> On Sep 24, 9:44 pm, "Chris Rebert" <c... at rebertia.com> wrote:
> ....
> >>>> Could you please define exactly what you mean by "elements" of a string?
> >>>> If you mean characters, then just use list():>>> list("  \n \t abc")
> >>>> [' ', ' ', '\n', ' ', '\t', ' ', 'a', 'b', 'c']
> >>>> Regards,
> >>>> Chris
> >>> Worked like a charm.
> >>> kudos!
> >> Why do you need to convert it to a list? Strings are sequences, so you
> >> can do things like slice them or iterate through them by character:
>
> >>>>> for character in "foo":
> >> ...     print character
> >> ...
> >> f
> >> o
> >> o
>
> >> --
>
> > The string draws a map that I then want to be able to traverse
> > through. If I can count through the individual characters of a list I
> > can create an x-y coordinate plane for navigation.
>
> You can 'count' (whatever that means) equally in strings as you do in
> lists. As said above, they behave exactly the same. Just strings
> are imutable - e.g. you can't change individual parts of them.
>
> Tino
>
> > --
> >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>  smime.p7s
> 4KViewDownload

Ahh, but I forgot to mention that I have to mark the path I took in
the string. So using list() and then join() are my best options.