Python3 For Bioinformatics String Indexing String Slicing with negative

Strings Cheat Sheet In Python, individual items in an ordered set of data can indexing
by: Lana Caldarevic - Youtube: Lantech be accessed directly using a numeric index or key value. Negative indices can
This process is referred to as indexing. be used with slicing as well. -1
refers to the last character, -2 the second-to-last, and so
Strings Individual characters in a string can be accessed by on,howjustto asslicewiththesimple indexing. The diagram below shows
Strings are sequences of character data, wrapped inside specifying the string name followed by a number in substring "oob" from the string "foobar"
single, double, or triple quotes. square brackets ([]). using both positive and negative indices:
'This is a string in Python' # string in single quotes String indexing in Python is zero-based: the first
"This is a string in Python" # string in double quotes character in the string has index 0, the next has index 1,
'''This is a string in Python''' # string in triple quotes and so on. The index of the last character will be the
"""This is a string in Python""" # string in triple double- length of the string minus one.
quotes
String indices can also be specified with negative s[-5:-2]
A string literal can be assigned to a variable, and printed numbers, in which case indexing occurs from the end of >>> "oob"
using print() command the string backward: -1 refers to the last character, -2
the second-to-last character, and so on. s[1:4]
message = "Hello World" >>> "oob"
print(message)
s[-5:-2] == s[1:4]
>>> Hello World >>> True

String Operators s = "foobar" Modifying Strings

Strings are one of the data types Python considers
s[0] immutable, meaning not able to be changed.
Operators + and * can be applied to strings as well. >>> "f"
The + operator concatenates strings and returns new len(s) In truth, there really isn’t much need to modify strings.
string consisting of the operands joined together. >>> 6 You can usually easily accomplish what you want by
generating a copy of the original string that has the
s[len(s)-1] desired change in place.
s = "abc" >>> "r" You can accomplish that by using string indexing or built-
t = "cba" in string method replace().
s+t
>>> "abccba" s = "foobar"
s[-1] s[3] = "x"
>>> "r" >>> TypeError: "str" object does not support item
The * operator creates multiple copies of a string. assignment
If s is a string and n is an integer, either s*n or n*s returns s[-2]
a string consisting of n concatenated copies of s: >>> "a" s = s[:3] + "x" + s[4:]
s
s = "abc" s[-len(s)] >>> "fooxar"
s*3 >>> "f"
>>> "abcabcabc" s = "foobar"
Attempting to index beyond the end of the string results s = s.replace('b', 'x')
in an error: s
>>> "fooxar"
s = "abc" s[6]
3*s >>> IndexError: string index out of range
>>> "abcabcabc" Built-in String Methods
s[-7] Here is a list of only some of methods you can use with
Python also provides a membership, in operator. The in >>> IndexError: string index out of range strings, full list you can find at: https://bit.ly/2YbUjXw
operator returns True if the first operand is contained s = string
within the second, and False otherwise. There is also a not s.capitalize() - converts first character to uppercase
and all other characters to lowercase
in operator, which does the opposite. String Slicing s.lower() - all alphabetic characters converted to
lowercase
Python also allows a form of indexing syntax that
s = "abc" extracts substrings from a string, known as string slicing. s.upper() - all alphabetic characters converted to
s in "I am abc." If s is a string, an expression of the form s[m:n] returns uppercase
>>> True the portion of s starting with position m, and up to but not s.count(<sub>) - returns the number of non-overlapping
including position n. occurrences of substring <sub> in s
s = "abc" s.endswith(<suffix>) - returns True if s ends with the
s not in "I am abc." If we omit the first index, the slice starts at the beginning specified <suffix> and False otherwise
>>> False of the string. Thus, s[:m] and s[0:m] are equivalent. s.find(<sub>) - returns the lowest index in s where
substring <sub> is found
Similarly, if we omit the second index as in s[n:], the slice s.rfind(<sub>) - returns the highest index in s where
extends from the first index until the end. substring <sub> is found
s.startswith(<prefix>) - returns True if s starts with the
Built-in String Functions
Python provides many functions for strings that are built- s = "foobar"
specified <prefix> and False otherwise
s.isalpha() - returns True if s is nonempty and all its
in to the interpreter and always available. s[2:5] characters are alphabetic, and False otherwise
>>> "oba" s.replace(<old>, <new>) - returns a copy of s with all
chr() # Converts an integer to a character s[:5] occurrences of substring <old> replaced by <new>
ord() # Converts a character to an integer >>> "fooba" s.strip([<chars>]) - returns a copy of s with removed
len() # Returns the length of a string s[2:] both leading and trailing <chars>
str() # Returns a string representation of an >>> "obar" s.join(<iterable>) - returns the string that results from
object concatenating the objects in <iterable> separated by s