Strings

Chapter 6
String Data Type
• A string is a sequence of characters

• A string literal uses quotes

'Hello' or "Hello"

• For strings, + means “concatenate”

• When a string contains numbers, it is still a string

• We can convert numbers in a string into a number using int()

 Reading and
Converting >>> a = input('Enter:')
Enter:100
• We prefer to read data in using >>> x = a – 10
strings and then parse and Traceback (most recent call last): File
convert the data as we need "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -:
• This gives us more control over 'str' and 'int'
error situations and/or bad user >>> x = int(a) – 10
input >>> print(x)
90
• Input numbers must be
converted from strings
 Looking Inside Strings
• We can get at any single character in a
b a n a n a
string using an index specified in square
brackets 0 1 2 3 4 5
>>> fruit = 'banana'
• The index value can be an expression that >>> letter = fruit[1]
is computed >>> print(letter)
a
• You will get a python error if you attempt to >>> x = 3
>>> w = fruit[x - 1]
index beyond the end of a string
>>> print(w)
n
 Strings Have Length

b a n a n a
The built-in function len gives 0 1 2 3 4 5
us the length of a string
>>> fruit = 'banana'
>>> print(len(fruit))
6
 Looping Through Strings
• The iteration variable is
fruit = 'banana'
index = 0
completely taken care of while index < len(fruit) : b
by the for loop letter = fruit[index] a
print(letter)
index = index + 1
n
a
n
• A definite loop using a fruit = 'banana' a
for statement is much for letter in fruit :
more elegant print(letter)
 Looping and Counting

word = 'banana'
This is a simple loop that count = 0
loops through each letter in a for letter in word :
string and counts the number if letter == 'a' :
of times the loop encounters count = count + 1
the 'a' character print(count)
Slicing Strings M o n t y P y t h o n
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
• We can also look at any
continuous section of a string
using a colon operator >>> s = 'Monty Python'
>>> print(s[0:4])
• The second number is one Mont
beyond the end of the slice - >>> print(s[6:7])
“up to but not including” P
• If the second number is >>> print(s[6:20])
beyond the end of the string, Python
it stops at the end
Slicing Strings M o n t y P y t h o n
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

>>> s = 'Monty Python'

If we leave off the first number >>> print(s[:2])
or the last number of the slice, Mo
it is assumed to be the >>> print(s[8:])
beginning or end of the string
respectively thon
>>> print(s[:])
Monty Python
 Strings are immutable
We cannot change an existing
string! The best you can do is word = 'banana'
create a new string with the word[0] = p
desired changes. TypeError Traceback (most recent call
last)
word = 'banana' <ipython-input-22-d8e69a6e748a> in
New_word = 'p‘ + word[1:] <module>()
----> 1 w[0]=‘p'
TypeError: 'str' object does not
support item assignment
 String Concatenation
>>> a = 'Hello'
>>> b = a + 'There'
When the + operator is >>> print(b)
applied to strings, it means HelloThere
“concatenation” >>> c = a + ' ' + 'There'
>>> print(c)
Hello There
>>>
Using in as a Logical Operator
>>> fruit = 'banana'
• The in keyword can also be >>> 'n' in fruit
used to check to see if one True
string is “in” another string >>> 'm' in fruit
False
• The in expression is a >>> 'nan' in fruit
True
logical expression that >>> if 'a' in fruit :
returns True or False and ... print('Found it!')
can be used in an if ...
statement Found it!
>>>
 String Comparison
if word == 'banana':
print('All right, bananas.')

if word < 'banana':

print('Your word,' + word + ', comes before banana.')
elif word > 'banana':
print('Your word,' + word + ', comes after banana.')
else:
print('All right, bananas.')
• Python has a number of string String Library
functions which are in the
string library

• These functions are already >>> greet = 'Hello Bob'

built into every string - we >>> zap = greet.lower()
invoke them by appending the >>> print(zap)
function to the string variable hello bob
>>> print(greet)
• These functions do not modify
Hello Bob
the original string, instead they
return a new string that has
been altered
>>> stuff = 'Hello world'
>>> type(stuff)
<class 'str'>
>>> dir(stuff)
['capitalize', 'casefold', 'center', 'count', 'encode', 'endswith', 'expandtabs', 'find', 'format',
'format_map', 'index', 'isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isdecimal', 'isdigit', 'isidentifier', 'islower', 'isnumeric',
'isprintable', 'isspace', 'istitle', 'isupper', 'join', 'ljust', 'lower', 'lstrip', 'maketrans', 'partition',
'replace', 'rfind', 'rindex', 'rjust', 'rpartition', 'rsplit', 'rstrip', 'split', 'splitlines', 'startswith', 'strip',
'swapcase', 'title', 'translate', 'upper', 'zfill']

https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#string-methods
Searching a String
b a n a n a
• We use the find() function to search
for a substring within another string
0 1 2 3 4 5

• find() finds the first occurrence of the >>> fruit = 'banana'

substring >>> pos = fruit.find('na')
>>> print(pos)
• If the substring is not found, find() 2
returns -1 >>> aa = fruit.find('z')
>>> print(aa)
• Remember that string position starts -1
at zero
 Search and Replace
• The replace() function
is like a “search and >>> greet = 'Hello Bob'
replace” operation in a >>> nstr = greet.replace('Bob','Jane')
>>> print(nstr)
word processor
Hello Jane

•
>>> nstr = greet.replace('o','X')
It replaces all >>> print(nstr)
occurrences of the HellX BXb
search string with the >>>
replacement string
 Stripping Whitespace
• Sometimes we want to take
a string and remove
whitespace at the beginning >>> greet = ' Hello Bob '
and/or end >>> greet.lstrip()
'Hello Bob '

• lstrip() and rstrip() remove

>>> greet.rstrip()
' Hello Bob'
whitespace at the left or right >>> greet.strip()
'Hello Bob'
• strip() removes both >>>
beginning and ending
whitespace
 Prefixes
>>> line = 'Please have a nice day'
>>> line.startswith('Please')
True
>>> line.startswith('p')
False
 Parsing and Extracting
Assume that we are presented with addresses formatted as below.
How do you proceed to pull out the second half of the strings (i.e. uct.ac.za)?

From stephen.marquard@uct.ac.za Sat Jan 5 09:14:16 2008

Idea: find the @ symbol in the string, and the first whitespace character after the at-sign. Then
use string slicing to extract the desired portion of the string
 Parsing and Extracting
>>> data = 'From stephen.marquard@uct.ac.za Sat Jan 5 09:14:16 2008'
>>> startPos = data.find('@')
>>> print(startPos)
21
>>> endPos = data.find(' ', startPos)
>>> print(endPos)
31
>>> host = data[startPos +1 : endPos]
>>> print(host)
uct.ac.za
 Format Operator
• The format operator, % allows us to construct strings, replacing
parts of the strings with the data stored in variables.
• We use “%d” to format an integer, “%g” to format a floating point
number, and “%s” to format a string

>>> Items = 32
>>> 'We have %d items' % Items
'We have 32 items‘

>>> ' He bought %d %s last month' % (3, ' cars ')

'We have 32 items'
 Summary
• String type
• Read/Convert
• Indexing strings []
• Slicing strings [2:4]
• Looping through strings
with for and while
• Concatenating strings with +
• String operations
• String library
• String comparisons
• Searching in strings
• Replacing text
• Stripping white space
 Exercises
• Write a while loop that starts at the last character in a string and
prints the reversed string.

• Take the following Python code that stores a string:

str = ' X-DSPAM-Confidence:0.8475 '
Use find and string slicing to extract the portion of the string after the
colon character and then use the float function to convert the extracted
string into a floating point number.