Strings are text type and are sequences of character data. It is represented by quotation marks, either single or double quotes.
Example:
“Hello”
‘What is your name?’
>>> “Hello”
‘Hello’
>>> x = ‘What is your name?’
>>> print (x)
What is your name?
>>>
Some key notes:
1.Escape sequences in strings = use backslash (\) character
Examples:
>>> print (‘This is a single quote symbol \’ ‘)
This is a single quote symbol ‘>>> print (‘This is a single quote symbol (\’)’)This is a single quote symbol (‘)>>> print (“This is a single quote symbol (\’)”)This is a single quote symbol (‘)
>>> print (‘I’m handsome’)File “<stdin>”, line 1print (‘I’m handsome’)^SyntaxError: invalid syntax>>> print (‘I\’m handsome’)I’m handsome
>>> x = “I am the \”King\” of this land”>>> print (x)I am the “King” of this land
>>> print (‘This is a backslash symbol \\’)This is a backslash symbol \
Other popular escape characters:
\n = new line
\n = new line
\t = tab
>>> print (‘test \n only’)testonly
>>> print (‘test \t only’)test only
2. Since it is a sequence, can use indexing and slicing for the subsets of strings using the slice operator ([ ] and [:] ). Indexes starting “0” in the start of the string.
Example:
Character: E u a n
Index: 0 1 2 3
Neg Index:-4 -3 -2 -1
>>> x = “Euan”
>>> print(x[0])
E
>>> print(x[3])
n
>>> print(x[-3])
u
>>> print(x[-4])
E
For slicing, it lets you access parts of the sequence, normally we use it if we want to get the part of the string and not the complete string.
Syntax:
string[start : end : step]
where:
start = starting index
end = end index (not included in substring,go up to but don’t include it)
step=optional argument determining the increment between each index for slicing
Example:
W r i t e c o d e
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
You only want to get the word code in this string (remember the indexing concept
>>> x =”Writecode”
>>> print(x)
Writecode
>>> print (x[5:])
code
So if you want to get the word “Write”, then you can do this way
>>> print (x[:5])
Write
How about middle?example we want to take word “teco”
>>> print (x[3:7])
teco
More indexing and slicing for next post.