Strings

● A string is a data structure in Python that represents a sequence of

characters
● It is an immutable data type, meaning that once you have created
a string, you cannot change it.
● Strings are used widely in many different applications, such as
○ Natural language Processing.
○ Regular expression.
○ Data mining.
○ Dictionaries.
○ Chatbot.
○ Machine translation.
 Creating a String in Python
● Strings in Python can be created using single quotes or double quotes or
even triple quotes.
Index:
[0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

p y t h o n
● Index can be variable,expression.
● It should be integer
ref:py_str1.py
● A segment of a
string is called a
slice.

● Selecting a slice is
similar to selecting
a character:
Exercise:
● Write a while loop that starts at the last character in the string and works
its way backwards to the first character in the string, printing each letter
on a separate line, except backwards.
● Given that fruit is a string, what does fruit[:] mean?
● 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.
● Write a Python program to calculate the length of a 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.

Ref:py_str3.py
 ● Strings are immutable

Solution: The best you can do is create a new string that is a variation on the original:
● This example concatenates a
new first letter onto a slice
of “python”.

● It has no effect on the

original string.
program counts the number of times the letter “a” appears in a string:

word = 'banana'
count = 0
for letter in word:
output Count of a’s:3
if letter == 'a':
count = count + 1
print(“count of a’s:”,count)
 in operator

● The word in is a boolean operator that takes two strings and returns True if the first appears as a
substring in the second:

>>> 'o' in 'python'

True
>>> 'i' in 'python'
False
 String comparison
word=input("enter string:")
enter string:banana
if word < 'banana': All right banana's
print('Your word,' + word + ', comes before banana.')
>>>
elif word > 'banana': enter string:Banana
Your word,Banana, comes before
print('Your word,' + word + ', comes after banana.')
banana.
else:
>>>
print("All right banana's") enter string:cat
Your word,ant, comes after banana.

Unicode of ‘b’=98 ‘B’=66 ‘c’=99

 Exercises:

1. Write a program that accepts a string from user. Your program should count
and display number of vowels in that string.
2. Write a Python program to compare two strings and if the strings are equal,
True should be printed or else False should be printed.
3. Write a Python program to iterate through a string and check whether a
particular character is present or not. If present, true should be printed
otherwise, false should be printed.
>>> 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']
 capitalize()

>>> help(str.capitalize)
help(str.capitalize)
Help on method_descriptor:
capitalize(self, /)
Return a capitalized version of the string.

● More specifically, make the first character have upper case and the
rest lower case.
txt='hello and welcome to the world'
txt=’HELLO’
x=txt.capitalize()
x=txt.capitalize()
print(x)
print(x)
Output:
Output:
Hello and welcome to the world
Hello
 upper()

>>> word='Banana'
>>> word='banana'
>>> >>>
newword=word.upper() newword=word.upper()
>>> print(newword)
>>> print(newword)
output:
output:
BANANA
BANANA
 find():
String find() method returns the lowest index or first occurrence of the substring if
it is found in a given string. If it is not found, then it returns -1.

>>>
word='banana'
>>> word='banana'
>>> word.find('na') >>> word.find('na',3)
4
Output: >>>

2
strip():to remove white space (spaces, tabs, or newlines) from the beginning and end of a string
using the strip method:

line=' here we go'

>>> line.strip()
>>> line=' here we go '
>>> line.strip()
'here we go'
'here we go'
>>>
>>>
 startswith()
>>> line='have a nice day'
>>> line.startswith('have')
True
>>> line=' have a nice day'
>>> line.startswith('have')
False
>>>
 find()
>>> data = 'From [email protected] Sat Jan 5 09:14:16 2008'
>>> atpos=data.find('@')
>>> print(atpos)
21
>>> sppos = data.find(' ',atpos)
>>> print(sppos)
31
>>> host=data[atpos+1:sppos]
>>> print(host)
uct.ac.za
 Format strings
● The format operator, % allows us to construct strings, replacing parts of the strings with
the data stored in variables.
● When applied to integers, % is the modulus operator.
● But when the first operand is a string, % is the format operator.
● The first operand is the format string, which contains one or more format sequences that
specify how the second operand is formatted. The result is a string.

>>> camels=42
>>> print( 'I have spotted %d camels.' % camels)
I have spotted 42 camels.
 Exercise
● Python program to count no of vowels in a given string
○ Input: apple
○ output:2
● Python program to capitalize the first and last letter of the word
○ Input:apple
○ output:ApplE
● Python program to compute the length of the string without spaces
○ Input: python subject
○ output:13