Inserting strings into lists in Python (v. 3.4.2)

Question

I am learning about Functions and Classes in Python 3.4.2, and I got a little sidetracked by the output from this code snippet:

print("This program will collect your demographic information and output it")
print ("")

class Demographics:   #This class contains functions to collect demographic info 

    def phoneFunc():  #This function will collect user's PN, including area code
        phoneNum = str(input("Enter your phone number, area code first "))
        phoneNumList = []
        phoneNumList[:0] = phoneNum
        #phoneNumList.insert(0, phoneNum) this is commented out b/c I tried this and it made the next two lines insert the dash incorrectly

        phoneNumList.insert(3, '-')
        phoneNumList.insert(7, '-')
        print(*phoneNumList)

x = Demographics
x.phoneFunc()

When it prints the phone number, it spaces the digits out like this: x x x - x x x - x x x x rather than xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Is there a way to remove the spaces between the characters? I've looked at these threads (the first one was the most helpful, and got me partly on my way) but I suspect my problem isn't exactly the same as what's described in them:

Inserting a string into a list without getting split into characters

How to split a string into a list?

python 3.4.2 joining strings into lists

Answer 1

As it currently stands, you are passing a list of characters to the print method, each of which will be printed space separated (default separator) if you do not specify a separator.

If we specify the sep as empty string in the print method call, there will be no spaces in between the characters.

>>> phoneNumList = []
>>> phoneNumList[:0] = "xxx-xxx-xxxx"
>>> phoneNumList
['x', 'x', 'x', '-', 'x', 'x', 'x', '-', 'x', 'x', 'x', 'x']
>>> print(*phoneNumList)
x x x - x x x - x x x x
>>> print(*phoneNumList, sep="", end="\n")
xxx-xxx-xxxx

The other approach is to join the characters and pass them as a single string input to the print method, using print(''.join(phoneNumList))

>>> print(''.join(phoneNumList))
xxx-xxx-xxxx