Python: Find Longest Word

1. Introduction

When working with text data, it's often useful to find the longest word in a given string. This can be particularly helpful for tasks such as text analytics, natural language processing, or even simple word games. In this post, we will create a Python program to find the longest word in a string.

2. Program Overview

1. Accept a string as input from the user.

2. Split the string into words.

3. Determine the longest word.

4. Display the longest word and its length.

3. Code Program

# Python program to find the longest word in a string

def find_longest_word(text):
    """Function to find the longest word in a given string."""
    # Split the string into words
    words = text.split()

    # Find the longest word
    longest_word = max(words, key=len)

    return longest_word

# Accept user input
text_input = input("Enter a string: ")

# Get the longest word
longest = find_longest_word(text_input)

# Display the result
print(f"The longest word is '{longest}' with a length of {len(longest)} characters.")

Output:

Enter a string: This is a simple Python programming tutorial.
The longest word is 'programming' with a length of 11 characters.

4. Step By Step Explanation

1. We begin by defining a function named find_longest_word that takes a single argument - a string text.

2. Inside the function, we use the split() method to break the string into a list of words.

3. The max() function with key=len as its argument is used to determine the longest word. This means we're asking Python to find the maximum element (word, in this case) based on its length.

4. The function then returns the longest word.

5. In the main part of the program, we accept a string as input from the user and then call our find_longest_word function.

6. Finally, the result, i.e., the longest word and its length, is displayed.