Strings:

Conversions, Indexing, Slicing, Immutability.

Week 5 | Lecture 3 (5.3)
 This Week’s Content
§ Lecture 5.1
§ Objects & Strings: Operators and Methods
§ Chapter 7
§ Lecture 5.2
§ Debugging
§ Lecture 5.3
§ Strings: Conversions, Indexing, Slicing,
and Immutability
§ Chapter 7
 Working with Strings
§ The string (str) type was briefly introduced in
previous weeks
§ Let’s take our string knowledge to the next level!
§ escape sequences
§ str operations
§ type conversion
§ str indexing and slicing
§ str methods
Consider this…
§ Ask the user how many times they would like to see the string
”knock knock knock… Penny” repeated, and print it!
§ Can you customize the name?
 Let’s Code!
§ Let’s take a look at how this works in
Python!
§ Type conversion
§ String operators
§ Escape sequences
Open your
notebook

Click Link:
1. Type Conversions
 Working with Strings
§ The string (str) type was briefly introduced in
previous weeks
§ Let’s take our string knowledge to the next level!
§ escape sequences
§ str operations
§ type conversion
§ str indexing and slicing
§ str methods
 String Indexing
§ An index is a position within the string
§ A particular element of the string is accessed by the index of the
element surrounded by square brackets
§ Positive indices count from the left-hand side, beginning with the first
character at index 0, the second index 1, and so on…
§ Negative indices count from the right-hand side, beginning with the
last character at index -1, the second last at index -2, and so on…
>>> x = ”Yolo” >>> x = ”Yolo” >>> x = ”Yolo”
>>> x[0] >>> x[2] >>> x[-1]
‘Y’ ‘l’ ‘o’
 String Indexing
§ An index is a position within the string
§ A particular element of the string is accessed by the index of the element surrounded by square brackets
§ Positive indices count from the left-hand side, beginning with the first character at index 0, the second index 1…
§ Negative indices count from the right-hand side, beginning with the last character at index -1, the second last at
index -2, and so on…

>>> x = ”I Love Cats”

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I L o v e C a t s
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
>>> x[0] >>> x[6] >>> x[-11]
‘I’ ‘ ’ ‘I’
 String Slicing
§ We can extract more than one character (or substring) using slicing
§ Uses the syntax [start : finish], where:
§ start is the index where we start the slice
§ finish is the index of one after where we end the slice
§ When either start or finish are not provided:
§ If start index is missing, it defaults to the beginning
§ If finish index is missing, it defaults to the end

>>> x = ”Yolo” >>> x = ”Yolo” >>> x = ”Yolo”

>>> x[0:3] >>> x[:3] >>> x[-2:]
‘Yol’ ‘Yol’ ‘lo’
 String Slicing
§ We can extract more than one character (or substring) using slicing
§ Uses the syntax [start : finish], where:
§ start is the index where we start the slice
§ finish is the index of one after where we end the slice
§ When either start or finish are not provided:
§ If start index is missing, it defaults to the beginning
§ If finish index is missing, it defaults to the end
>>> x = ”I Love Cats”

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I L o v e C a t s
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
>>> x[2:6] >>> x[-9:-5] >>> x[-4:] >>> x[:]
‘Love’ ‘Love’ ‘Cats’ ‘I Love Cats’
 String Length
§ To obtain the length of a string you can use the built-in function len
§ The len function takes a string as an argument and returns an integer
indicating the length of the string
§ Note: This will always be the final index + 1
>>> x = ”I Love Cats”

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I L o v e C a t s
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
>>> len(x)
11
 Extended Slicing
§ We can slice (select) every nth character by providing three arguments
§ Uses the syntax [start : finish : step], where:
§ start is the index where we start the slice
§ finish is the index of one after where we end the slice
§ step is how much we count by between each character
§ When step is not provided, it defaults to 1

>>> x = ”Yolo” >>> x = ”Yolo”

>>> x[::2] >>> x[::]
‘Yl’ ‘Yolo’
 Extended Slicing
§ We can slice (select) every nth character by providing three arguments
§ Uses the syntax [start : finish : step], where:
§ start is the index where we start the slice
§ finish is the index of one after where we end the slice
§ step is how much we count by between each character
§ When step is not provided, it defaults to 1
>>> x = ”I Love Cats”
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I L o v e C a t s
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
>>> x[0:6:2] >>> x[::3] >>> x[::-1] >>> x[::-2]
‘ILv’ ‘Io t’ ‘staC evoL I’ ‘sa vLI’
 Let’s Code!
§ Let’s take a look at how this works in
Python!
§ String indexing
§ String slicing Open your
§ String length
§ String slicing with a ‘step’ notebook

Click Link:
2. String Indexing
and Slicing
 Modifying Strings
§ The indexing and slicing operations do not modify the string they act on
§ We cannot change a string!
§ Strings are immutable, meaning they CANNOT be changed
>>> x = ”I Love Cats”

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I L o v e C a t s
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
>>> x[7] = ‘B’
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment
 Modifying Strings
§ To “modify” a string, we must create a new one
§ Let’s change this to ”I Love Dogs”
>>> x = ”I Love Cats”

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
I L o v e C a t s
-11 -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
>>> x_new = x[:7] + ‘Dogs’ #x_new points to the new string object
>>> x = x_new #x points to the new object
>>> print(x)
‘I Love Dogs’
 Let’s Code!
§ Let’s take a look at how this works in
Python!
§ Modifying strings
§ String immutability Open your
notebook

Click Link:
3. Modifying
Strings
 Working with Strings
§ The string (str) type was briefly introduced in
previous weeks
§ Let’s take our string knowledge to the next level!
§ escape sequences
§ str operations
§ type conversion
§ str indexing and slicing
§ str methods
String Methods
§ Strings are objects and just like other objects, the str type has
associated methods that are only valid for strings
§ To find out which methods are associated with objects, use the
built-in function dir
>>> dir(str)
['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__doc__',
'__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__',
'__getnewargs__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__',
'__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__',
'__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__',
'__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'capitalize',
'casefold', 'center', 'count', 'encode', 'endswith', 'expandtabs', 'find',
'format', 'format_map', 'index', 'isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isascii', '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']
 String Method: upper
§ upper is a string method that generates a new string that has all
upper case characters

>>> white_rabbit = ”I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”

>>> white_rabbit.upper()
“I’M LATE! I’M LATE! FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DATE!”

>>> white_rabbit
“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”
 String Method: lower
§ lower is a string method that generates a new string that has all
lower case characters

>>> white_rabbit = ”I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”

>>> white_rabbit.lower()
”i’m late! i’m late! for a very important date!”

>>> white_rabbit
“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”
 String Method: find
§ The method find returns first index where a substring is found
§ Returns -1 if no such substring exists
§ The method rfind returns the last index where a substring is found
>>> white_rabbit = ”I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”

>>> white_rabbit.find(‘late’)
4

>>> white_rabbit.rfind(‘late’)
14
 String Method: replace
§ The method replace(old, new) returns a copy of the string in which
the occurrences of old have been replaced with new.
>>> white_rabbit = ”I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!”

>>> white_rabbit.replace(‘late’,’early’)
“I’m early! I’m early! For a very important date!”
 Chaining Methods
§ How would you replace the word “forward” with “backward”?
>>> s = ‘Forward, forward we must go, for there is no other way to go!’

§ Methods can be chained together

§ Perform first operation, which returns an object
§ Use the returned object for the next method

>>> s.lower().replace(‘forward’,’backward’)
‘backward, backward we must go, for there is no other way to go!’
>>> s.lower().replace(‘forward’,’backward’).capitalize()
‘Backward, backward we must go, for there is no other way to go!’
More String Methods
§ There are many more string methods available which you will
explore in lab assignments and tutorials
§ str.islower()
§ str.count(sub)
§ str.ljust(width) Do not need to memorize all of the string methods!
§ str.lstrip() Should know:
§ str.split() str.lower
§ str.strip() str.upper
str.find
str.rfind
str.replace
str.capitalize
(any others will be indicated in the review)
 Let’s Code!
§ Let’s take a look at how this works in
Python!
§ String methods
§
§
capitalize
upper Open your
§
§
lower
find notebook
§ rfind
§ And more…
Click Link:
4. String Methods
Strings:
Conversions, Indexing, Slicing, Immutability.
Week 5 | Lecture 3 (5.3)