CSCA20 Worksheet Strings

Introduction to strings

A string is just a sequence of characters. Why do you think it is called string?

List some real life applications that use strings:

Basics

We define strings using either single or double quotes csca20 or "csca20" unless it needs to
span more than one line and then we use triple quotes:
>>> This is a sentence
... on several lines
... it is too long
... to fit on one line.
This is a sentence\non several lines\nit is too long\nto fit on one line.
Hold on, well find out what \n stands for shortly!
Q. What do you think the result of csca + 20 is?
A.
Q. What other use does + have?
A.
We say that + is overloaded.
Q. How do you think Python knows what to do?
A.
Q. Why would "csca" + 20 result in an error?

Need to use conversion:

>>> dept = csc
>>> level = a
>>> num = 20
>>> dept + level + str(num)
csca20
>>>
1

Q. What do you think "ho" * 3 will do?

A.
Q. How about len("Saravanapavananthan") and "ou" in "colour"?
A.

Slicing Strings

Since strings are sequences of characters, we sometimes want to be able to retrieve portions of the
string. To do so, we need to have a way to refer the ith character. By convention, the first character
has position or index 0. Each subsequent character has index one greater.
Here are the ways we can access characters in a string s:
s = "sliceofspam"
s[0]
# Grab a single character. First index is zero.
s[3]
s[-2]
# Negative indexes are for counting from the RHS
s[2:5]
s[3:]
s[:8]
s[:]

#
#
#
#
#
s[3:-2] #
s[-5:] #
s[5:2] #

Slice a string. From position 2 (inclusive) to 5 (not inclusive)

If omit the second index, goes to the far RHS
If omit the first index, goes from the far LHS
If omit both, goes from both extremes.
I.e., you get a copy of the whole string.
You can use negative indices when slicing too.
Nothing there!

String Methods

We have been using some string operators such as:

csc + 108
# concatenation
ho * 3
# repetition
ou in colour # substring
There are many string methods.
These particular methods belong to the str type.
We call methods using the same notation as calling a function in a module:
u of toronto.capitalize()
campus = utsc
campus.capitalize()
Some methods require parameters, such as
2

campus.startswith(ut)
You need to know when you are calling a method vs calling a function; the notation is
different. For example:
s = "Hi, CSCA20 students!"
len(s)
# len is a built-in function. s is the argument passed in.
s.len()
# Doesnt work. len is not a string method.
s.lower()
lower(s)

# lower is a str method

# Doesnt work. lower() must be called on an object

Q. How can we get a list of all string methods with their descriptions?
A.
For the methods listed below, assume that the string we are using is: s = "This is CSC120/A20".
Method
s.lower()
s.replace("20", "48")
s.count("i")
"yabababa daba do!".count("abab")
s.find("is")
s.rfind("is")
s.find("is", 3)
s.find("is", 2)
s.find("the")
Define a new s = "
Method
s.lstrip()
s.rstrip()
s.strip()

Output

quite

open

Output

Explanation

line
Explanation

".

Loops

Sometimes we need to do something with each character in a string. This is called looping or
iterating over the string.
The form for looping through a string:
for char in s:
<do something involving char>
for, in are Python keywords
char is a variable that holds the value of the current character
s is the string (for now)

For example,
def print_vertical(s):
for char in s:
print(char)
Q. Trace the call print vertical("word")

Q. How many times does the loop execute?

A.
Sometimes we want to iterate over the indices of a string. Here is how we can reimplement
print vertical (much more on this later). Recall that len(s) returns the length of the string s.
def print_vertical(s):
for index in range(len(s)):
print(s[index])

Lets Practice

Let us design and implement some functions that involve strings.

Count the number of occurrences of a character in a string.
Count the number of vowels in a string.
Reverse a string.
Remove spaces from a string.
Count the number of characters two strings have in common.

Escape Sequences

Q. How can we put a new line or quote inside a string?

A. We use special escape sequences.
For each of the following escape sequences, guess what they do:
\n
\
\t
\\

\"

How about this example:

>>> print("\\t stands for \tab\ and is printed \\t\ (without quotes)")
\t stands for tab and is printed
(without quotes)

Printing strings: conversion specifiers

Consider this code snippet:

a1 = 89
a2 = 76
a3 = 91
print("The maximum of the three grades (", a1, ",", a2, "and", a3, ") is",
max(a1, a2, a3))
The result is:
The maximum of the three grades ( 89 , 76 and 91 ) is 91
It is a bit of a pain to intersperse variable values with non-variable text in a print statement.
We can try to use +:
print("The maximum of the three grades (" + a1 + "," + a2 + " and " +
a3 + ") is " + max(a1, a2, a3))
Q. Why does this cause an error?
A.
Q. How can we fix it?
A.
A MUCH better fix:
print("The maximum of the three grades (%d, %d and %d) is %d" %
(a1, a2, a3, max(a1, a2, a3)))
There is a % operator with two operands: a string on the left and a bunch of things on the
right.
5

 Each %d is a placeholder for a decimal (that is, base 10) integer.

After the string (with its placeholders in it), you type % followed by parenthesis containing
the list of values to be substituted wherever there is a %d.
We call the placeholders conversion specifiers. They indicate the format (e.g., integer,
float, string) we want the values printed in.
Q. The % is overloaded. What else is % used for?
A.
Q. What are the other two overloaded operators we have seen?
A.
Common conversion specifiers are:
%d
%f
%.2f
%s

display the object as a decimal integer

floating point; display it with 6 decimal places by default
floating point; display it with 2 decimal places (you can specify a number other than 2)
display the object as a string

Example
import math
print("pi is %.15f" % (math.pi))
r = 9.625
Write a print statement that calculates the area of a circle of radius r and outputs:
A circle of radius 9.625000 has area 291.0391.

Example
Write a snippet of code to ask for the users name and age and then print:
NAME is YYY years old.

8.1

The format built-in function

You may find formatting with the % operator awkward, though it does improve with familiarity.
An alternative is the built-in function format, which we will not cover here.