Programming Principles in Python (CSCI 503/490)

Strings

Dr. David Koop

(some slides adapted from Dr. Reva Freedman)

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023

 Generators
• Special functions that return lazy iterables
• Use less memory
• Change is that functions yield instead of return
• def square(it):
for i in it:
yield i*i
• If we are iterating through a generator, we hit the rst yield and immediately
return that rst computation
• Generator expressions just shorthand (remember no tuple comprehensions)
- (i * i for i in [1,2,3,4,5])

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 2

fi






fi

 Ef cient Evaluation
• Only compute when necessary, not beforehand
• u = compute_fast_function(s, t)
v = compute_slow_function(s, t)
if s > t and s**2 + t**2 > 100:
u = compute_fast_function(s, t)
res = u / 100
else:
v = compute_slow_function(s, t)
res = v / 100
• Slow function will not be executed unless the condition is true

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 3

fi
















 Short-Circuit Evaluation
• Automatic, works left to right according to order of operations (and before or)
• Works for and and or
• and:
- if any value is False, stop and return False
- a, b = 2, 3
a > 3 and b < 5
• or:
- if any value is True, stop and return True
- a, b, c = 2, 3, 7
a > 3 or b < 5 or c > 8

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 4

 Memoization
• memo_dict = {}
def memoized_slow_function(s, t):
if (s, t) not in memo_dict:
memo_dict[(s, t)] = compute_slow_function(s, t)
return memo_dict[(s, t)]
• for s, t in [(12, 10), (4, 5), (5, 4), (12, 10)]:
if s > t and (c := memoized_slow_function(s, t) > 50):
pass
else:
c = compute_fast_function(s, t)
• Second time executing for s=12, t=10, we don't need to compute!
• Tradeoff memory for compute time

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 5

















 Functional Programming
• Programming without imperative statements like assignment
• In addition to comprehensions & iterators, have functions:
- map: iterable of n values to an iterable of n transformed values
- lter: iterable of n values to an iterable of m (m <= n) values
• Eliminates need for concrete looping constructs

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 6

fi

 Lambda Functions
• def is_even(x):
return (x % 2) == 0
• filter(is_even, range(10) # generator
• Lots of code to write a simple check
• Lambda functions allow inline function de nition
• Usually used for "one-liners": a simple data transform/expression
• filter(lambda x: x % 2 == 0, range(10))
• Parameters follow lambda, no parentheses
• No return keyword as this is implicit in the syntax
• JavaScript has similar functionality (arrow functions): (d => d % 2 == 0)

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 7




fi

 Assignment 3
• Important for Test 1, but studying also should be a priority
• Deadline moved to Friday, Feb. 24
• Pokémon Data
• Looking at where and how people and goods move across land borders
• Start with the sample notebook (or copy its code) to download the data
• Data is a list of dictionaries
• Need to iterate through, update, and create new lists & dictionaries

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 8

 Test 1
• This Wednesday, Feb. 22, 11:00am-12:15pm
• In-Class, paper/pen & pencil
• Covers material through last week
• Format:
- Multiple Choice
- Free Response
• Information at the link above

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 9

 Remote Of ce Hours Today

• Due to family illness, need to conduct of ce hours remotely today (Zoom)
• Please email me with questions or for appointments

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 10

fi
fi

 Strings
• Remember strings are sequences of characters
• Strings are collections so have len, in, and iteration
- s = "Huskies"
len(s); "usk" in s; [c for c in s if c == 's']
• Strings are sequences so have
- indexing and slicing: s[0], s[1:]
- concatenation and repetition: s + " at NIU"; s * 2
• Single or double quotes 'string1', "string2"
• Triple double-quotes: """A string over many lines"""
• Escaped characters: '\n' (newline) '\t' (tab)

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 11




 Unicode and ASCII

• Conceptual systems
• ASCII:
- old 7-bit system (only 128 characters)
- English-centric
• Unicode:
- modern system
- Can represent over 1 million characters from all languages + emoji 🎉
- Characters have hexadecimal representation: é = U+00E9 and
name (LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE)
- Python allows you to type "é" or represent via code "\u00e9"

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 12

 Unicode and ASCII

• Encoding: How things are actually stored
• ASCII "Extensions": how to represent characters for different languages
- No universal extension for 256 characters (one byte), so…
- ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, CP-1252, etc.
• Unicode encoding:
- UTF-8: used in Python and elsewhere (uses variable # of 1—4 bytes)
- Also UTF-16 (2 or 4 bytes) and UTF-32 (4 bytes for everything)
- Byte Order Mark (BOM) for les to indicate endianness (which byte rst)

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 13

fi

fi

 Codes
• Characters are still stored as bits and thus can be represented by numbers
- ord → character to integer
- chr → integer to character
- "\N{horse}": named emoji

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 14

 Strings are Objects with Methods

• We can call methods on strings like we can with lists
- s = "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers"
s.count('p')
• Doesn't matter if we have a variable or a literal
- "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers".find("pick")

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 15



 Finding & Counting Substrings
• s.count(sub): Count the number of occurrences of sub in s
• s.find(sub): Find the rst position where sub occurs in s, else -1
• s.rfind(sub): Like find, but returns the right-most position
• s.index(sub): Like find, but raises a ValueError if not found
• s.rindex(sub): Like index, but returns right-most position
• sub in s: Returns True if s contains sub
• s.startswith(sub): Returns True if s starts with sub
• s.endswith(sub): Returns True if s ends with sub

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 16

fi

 Removing Leading and Trailing Strings

• s.strip(): Copy of s with leading and trailing whitespace removed
• s.lstrip(): Copy of s with leading whitespace removed
• s.rstrip(): Copy of s with trailing whitespace removed
• s.removeprefix(prefix): Copy of s with prefix removed (if it exists)
• s.removesuffix(suffix): Copy of s with suffix removed (if it exists)

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 17

 Transforming Text
• s.replace(oldsub, newsub):
Copy of s with occurrences of oldsub in s with newsub
• s.upper(): Copy of s with all uppercase characters
• s.lower(): Copy of s with all lowercase characters
• s.capitalize(): Copy of s with rst character capitalized
• s.title(): Copy of s with rst character of each word capitalized

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 18

fi


fi

 Checking String Composition

String Method Description
isalnum() Returns True if the string contains only alphanumeric characters (i.e., digits & letters).
isalpha() Returns True if the string contains only alphabetic characters (i.e., letters).
isdecimal() Returns True if the string contains only decimal integer characters
isdigit() Returns True if the string contains only digits (e.g., '0', '1', '2').
isidentifier() Returns True if the string represents a valid identi er.
islower() Returns True if all alphabetic characters in the string are lowercase characters
isnumeric() Returns True if the characters in the string represent a numeric value w/o a + or - or .
isspace() Returns True if the string contains only whitespace characters.
istitle() Returns True if the rst character of each word is the only uppercase character in it.
isupper() Returns True if all alphabetic characters in the string are uppercase characters

[Deitel & Deitel]

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 19
fi
fi
 Splitting
• s = "Venkata, Ranjit, Pankaj, Ali, Karthika"
• names = s.split(',') # names is a list
• names = s.split(',', 3) # split by commas, split <= 3 times
• separator may be multiple characters
• if no separator is supplied (sep=None), runs of consecutive whitespace
delimit elements
• rsplit works in reverse, from the right of the string
• partition and rpartition for a single split with before, sep, and after
• splitlines splits at line boundaries, optional parameter to keep endings

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 20

 Joining
• join is a method on the separator used to join a list of strings
• ','.join(names)
- names is a list of strings, ',' is the separator used to join them
• Example:
- def orbit(n):
# …
return orbit_as_list
print(','.join(orbit_as_list))

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 21




 Formatting
• s.ljust, s.rjust: justify strings by adding ll characters to obtain a string
with speci ed width
• s.zfill: ljust with zeroes
• s.format: templating function
- Replace elds indicated by curly braces with corresponding values
- "My name is {} {}".format(first_name, last_name)
- "My name is {1} {0}".format(last_name, first_name)
- "My name is {first_name} {last_name}.format(
first_name=name[0], last_name=name[1])
- Braces can contain number or name of keyword argument
- Whole format mini-language to control formatting
D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 22
fi
fi

fi



 Format Strings
• Formatted string literals (f-strings) pre x the starting delimiter with f
• Reference variables directly!
- f"My name is {first_name} {last_name}"
• Can include expressions, too:
- f"My name is {name[0].capitalize()} {name[1].capitalize()}"
• Same format mini-language is available

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 23

fi

 Format Mini-Language Presentation Types

• Not usually required for obvious types
• :d for integers
• :c for characters
• :s for strings
• :e or :f for oating point
- e: scienti c notation (all but one digit after decimal point)
- f: xed-point notation (decimal number)

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 24

fi
fi
fl

 Field Widths and Alignments

• After : but before presentation type
- f'[{27:10d}]' # '[ 27]'
- f'[{"hello":10}]' # '[hello ]'
• Shift alignment using < or >:
- f'[{"hello":>15}]' # '[ hello]'
• Center align using ^:
- f'[{"hello":^7}]' # '[ hello ]'

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 25

 Numeric Formatting
• Add positive sign:
- f'[{27:+10d}]' # '[ +27]'
• Add space but only show negative numbers:
- print(f'{27: d}\n{-27: d}') # note the space in front of 27
• Separators:
- f'{12345678:,d}' # '12,345,678'

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 26

 Raw Strings
• Raw strings pre x the starting delimiter with r
• Disallow escaped characters
• '\\n is the way you write a newline, \\\\ for \\.'
• r"\n is the way you write a newline, \\ for \."
• Useful for regular expressions

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 27

fi

 Regular Expressions
• AKA regex
• A syntax to better specify how to decompose strings
• Look for patterns rather than speci c characters
• "31" in "The last day of December is 12/31/2016."
• May work for some questions but now suppose I have other lines like: "The
last day of September is 9/30/2016."
• …and I want to nd dates that look like:
• {digits}/{digits}/{digits}
• Cannot search for every combination!
• \d+/\d+/\d+ # \d is a character class

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 28

fi

fi

 Metacharacters
• Need to have some syntax to indicate things like repeat or one-of-these or
this is optional.
•. ^ $ * + ? { } [ ] \ | ( )
• []: de ne character class
• ^: complement (opposite)
• \: escape, but now escapes metacharacters and references classes
• *: repeat zero or more times
• +: repeat one or more times
• ?: zero or one time
• {m,n}: at least m and at most n

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 29

fi

 Prede ned Character Classes

Character
Matches
class
\d Any digit (0–9).
\D Any character that is not a digit.
\s Any whitespace character (such as spaces, tabs and newlines).
\S Any character that is not a whitespace character.
\w Any word character (also called an alphanumeric character)
\W Any character that is not a word character.

[Deitel & Deitel]

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 30
fi
 Performing Matches

Method/Attribute Purpose

match() Determine if the RE matches at the beginning of

the string.
search() Scan through a string, looking for any location
where this RE matches.
findall() Find all substrings where the RE matches, and
returns them as a list.
finditer() Find all substrings where the RE matches, and
returns them as an iterator.

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 31

 Regular Expressions in Python
• import re
• re.match(<pattern>, <str_to_check>)
- Returns None if no match, information about the match otherwise
- Starts at the beginning of the string
• re.search(<pattern>, <str_to_check>)
- Finds single match anywhere in the string
• re.findall(<pattern>, <str_to_check>)
- Finds all matches in the string, search only nds the rst match
• Can pass in ags to alter methods: e.g. re.IGNORECASE

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 32

fl

fi

fi

 Examples
• s0 = "No full dates here, just 02/15"
s1 = "02/14/2021 is a date"
s2 = "Another date is 12/25/2020"
• re.match(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s1) # returns match object
• re.match(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s0) # None
• re.match(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s2) # None!
• re.search(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s2) # returns 1 match object
• re.search(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s3) # returns 1! match object
• re.findall(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s3) # returns list of strings
• re.finditer(r'\d+/\d+/\d+',s3) # returns iterable of matches

D. Koop, CSCI 503/490, Spring 2023 33