NAVODAYA VIDYALAYA SAMITI

HYDERABAD REGION

E-CONTENT
COMPUTER SCIENCE CLASS XI

By: Meenakshi Sharma

PGT Computer Science JNV Hassan
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AND
PROGRAMMING-1

Strings
Learning Objectives

 Introduction to Strings
 String Operations
 Traversing a String
 Strings Methods and Built-in Functions
 Handling Strings
Strings

String is a sequence which is made up of one or more UNICODE characters. Here the
character can be a letter, digit, whitespace or any other symbol. A string can be created
by enclosing one or more characters in single, double or triple quote.
Example:
>>> str1 = 'Hello World!'
>>> str2 = "Hello World!"
>>> str3 = """Hello World!"""
>>> str4 = '''Hello World!''
str1, str2, str3, str4 are all string variables having the same value 'Hello World!'.
Accessing Characters in a String
Each individual character in a string can be accessed using a technique called indexing. The
index specifies the character to be accessed in the string and is written /in square brackets ([ ]).
The index of the first character (from left) in the string is 0 and the last character is n-1 where n is
the length of the string. If we give index value out of this range then we get an IndexError. The
index must be an integer (positive, zero or negative).
>>> str1 = 'Hello World!‘
>>> str1[0]
'H‘
>>> str1[6]
'W‘
>>> str1[11]
'!'
String is Immutable
A string is an immutable data type. It means that the contents of the string cannot be changed
after it has been created. An attempt to do this would lead to an error.
>>> str1 = "Hello World!"
#if we try to replace character 'e' with 'a'
>>> str1[1] = 'a'
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment
Strings Operators
There are several operators that
can be used to manipulate the
strings in several ways.
There are Basic Operators(+
and *), Membership Operators
(In and Not In) and Comparison
Operators(all relational
operators)

Basic Operators:
1. Concatenation: To
concatenate means to join.
Python allows us to join two
strings using concatenation
operator plus which is denoted
by symbol +.
Strings Operators
Basic Operators:
2. Repetition : Python allows us
to repeat the given string using
repetition operator which is
denoted by symbol *.
Strings Operators
Membership Operators:
Python has two membership
operators 'in' and 'not in'.
The 'in' operator takes two strings
and returns True if the first string
appears as a substring in the
second string, otherwise it returns
False.
The 'not in' operator also takes
two strings and
returns True if the first string does
not appear as a
substring in the second string,
otherwise returns False.
Strings Slicing
Slicing :
In Python, to access some part of
a string or substring, we use a
method called slicing. This can be
done by specifying an index
range. Given a string str1, the
slice operation str1[n:m] returns
the part of the string str1 starting
from index n (inclusive) and
ending at m (exclusive) i.e.
str1[n:m] returns all the characters
starting from str1[n] till str1[m-1].
The numbers of characters in the
substring will always be equal to
difference of two indices m and n,
i.e., (m-n).
Strings Slicing
Slicing :
If the first index is not mentioned, the slice starts from index 0.
>>> str1[:5] #gives substring from index 0 to 4
'Hello'
If the second index is not mentioned, the slicing is done till the length of the string.
>>> str1[6:] #gives substring from index 6 to end
'World!'
The slice operation can also take a third index that specifies the ‘step size’. For example,
str1[n:m:k], means every kth character has to be extracted from the string str1 starting from n and
ending at m-1. By default, the step size is one.
>>> str1[0:10:2] will give output 'HloWr'
>>> str1[0:10:3] will give output 'HlWl'
Strings Traversal
String Traversal:
We can access each character of a string or traverse a string using for loop and while loop.
(A) String Traversal Using for Loop:
>>> str1 = 'Hello World!'
>>> for ch in str1:
print(ch,end = '‘”)
Hello World! #output of for loop
In the above code, the loop starts from the first character of the string str1 and automatically ends
when the last character is accessed.
Strings Traversal
String Traversal:
We can access each character of a string or traverse a string using for loop and while loop.
(B) String Traversal Using while Loop:
>>> str1 = 'Hello World!'
>>> index = 0
#len(): a function to get length of string
>>> while index < len(str1):
print(str1[index],end = '')
index += 1
Hello World! #output of while loop
Here while loop runs till the condition index len(str) is True, where index varies from 0 to len(str1) -1.
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Python has several built-in functions that allow us to work with strings.
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings Built-in Functions
String Methods and Built-in Functions:
Strings
Strings
Summary
A string is a sequence of characters enclosed in single, double or triple quotes.
Indexing is used for accessing individual characters within a string.
The first character has the index 0 and the last character has the index n-1 where n is the
length of the string. The negative indexing ranges from -n to -1.
Strings in Python are immutable, i.e., a string cannot be changed after it is created.
Membership operator in takes two strings and returns True if the first string appears as a
substring in the second else returns False. Membership operator ‘not in’ does the reverse.
Retrieving a portion of a string is called slicing. This can be done by specifying an index range.
The slice operation str1[n:m] returns the part of the string str1 starting from index n (inclusive)
and ending at m (exclusive).
Each character of a string can be accessed either using a for loop or while loop.
There are many built-in functions for working with strings in Python.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Computer Science Textbook for class XI

by NCERT
2. Computer Science with Python
by Sumitha Arora
3. Computer Science with Python
by Preeti Arora