What is the purpose of the .split() method in Python?

The .split() method in Python is designed to break a string into a list of substrings based on a specified delimiter, which by default is a space. When you call this method on a string, it searches the string for the delimiter and divides the string at each point where it finds that delimiter, returning a list containing the individual segments of the original string. This functionality is particularly useful when you need to process textual data, such as splitting sentences into words or parsing values in a CSV format.

For example, if you have a string like "Hello, how are you?" and you use the .split() method, you'll end up with the list ['Hello,', 'how', 'are', 'you?'], effectively separating the words in the sentence. The power of the .split() method lies in its ability to handle various delimiters and create manageable segments of data for further processing.