Iterating each character in a string using Python

As Johannes pointed out,

for c in "string":
    #do something with c

You can iterate pretty much anything in python using the for loop construct,

for example, open("file.txt") returns a file object (and opens the file), iterating over it iterates over lines in that file

with open(filename) as f:
    for line in f:
        # do something with line

If that seems like magic, well it kinda is, but the idea behind it is really simple.

There's a simple iterator protocol that can be applied to any kind of object to make the for loop work on it.

Simply implement an iterator that defines a next() method, and implement an __iter__ method on a class to make it iterable. (the __iter__ of course, should return an iterator object, that is, an object that defines next())

See official documentation

If you need access to the index as you iterate through the string, use enumerate():

>>> for i, c in enumerate('test'):
...     print i, c
... 
0 t
1 e
2 s
3 t

Even easier:

for c in "test":
    print c

Just to make a more comprehensive answer, the C way of iterating over a string can apply in Python, if you really wanna force a square peg into a round hole.

i = 0
while i < len(str):
    print str[i]
    i += 1

But then again, why do that when strings are inherently iterable?

for i in str:
    print i