CHAPTER9

More
About
Strings

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 Topics
• Basic String Operations
• String Slicing
• Testing, Searching, and Manipulating
Strings

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 Basic String Operations
• Many types of programs perform
operations on strings
• In Python, many tools for examining
and manipulating strings
– Strings are sequences, so many of the tools
that work with sequences work with strings

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 Accessing the Individual
Character in a String
• To access an individual character in a
string:
– Use a for loop
• Format: for character in string:
• Useful when need to iterate over the whole string,
such as to count the occurrences of a specific
character
– Use indexing
• Each character has an index specifying its position
in the string, starting at 0
• Format: character = my_string[i]
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Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Accessing the Individual
Character in a String (cont’d.)

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 Accessing the Individual
Character in a String (cont’d.)
• IndexError exception will occur if:
– You try to use an index that is out of range for
the string
– Likely to happen when loop iterates beyond the
end of the string
• len(string) function can be used to
obtain the length of a string
– Useful to prevent loops from iterating beyond
the end of a string

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 String Concatenation
• Concatenation: appending one string to
the end of another string
– Use the + operator to produce a string that is
a combination of its operands
– The augmented assignment operator += can
also be used to concatenate strings
• The operand on the left side of the += operator
must be an existing variable; otherwise, an
exception is raised

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 Strings Are Immutable
• Strings are immutable
– Once they are created, they cannot be
changed
• Concatenation doesn’t actually change the existing
string, but rather creates a new string and assigns
the new string to the previously used variable
– Cannot use an expression of the form
string[index] = new_character
• Statement of this type will raise an exception

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 Strings Are Immutable
(cont’d.)

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 String Slicing
• Slice: span of items taken from a
sequence, known as substring
– Slicing format: string[start : end]
• Expression will return a string containing a copy of
the characters from start up to, but not including,
end
• If start not specified, 0 is used for start index
• If end not specified, len(string) is used for end
index
– Slicing expressions can include a step value
and negative indexes relative to end of string
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 Testing, Searching, and
Manipulating Strings
• You can use the in operator to
determine whether one string is
contained in another string
– General format: string1 in string2
• string1 and string2 can be string literals or
variables referencing strings
• Similarly you can use the not in
operator to determine whether one
string is not contained in another string

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 String Methods
• Strings in Python have many types of
methods, divided into different types of
operations
– General format:

mystring.method(arguments)
• Some methods test a string for specific
characteristics
– Generally Boolean methods, that return True
if a condition exists, and False otherwise
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 String Methods (cont’d.)

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

 String Methods (cont’d.)
• Some methods return a copy of the
string, to which modifications have
been made
– Simulate strings as mutable objects
• String comparisons are case-sensitive
– Uppercase characters are distinguished from
lowercase characters
– lower and upper methods can be used for
making case-insensitive string comparisons

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 String Methods (cont’d.)

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 String Methods (cont’d.)
• Programs commonly need to search for
substrings
• Several methods to accomplish this:
– endswith(substring): checks if the string
ends with substring
• Returns True or False
– startswith(substring): checks if the
string starts with substring
• Returns True or False

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 String Methods (cont’d.)
• Several methods to accomplish this
(cont’d):
– find(substring): searches for
substring within the string
• Returns lowest index of the substring, or if the
substring is not contained in the string, returns -1
– replace(substring, new_string):
• Returns a copy of the string where every
occurrence of substring is replaced with
new_string

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 String Methods (cont’d.)

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 The Repetition Operator
• Repetition operator: makes multiple
copies of a string and joins them
together
– The * symbol is a repetition operator when
applied to a string and an integer
• String is left operand; number is right
– General format: string_to_copy * n
– Variable references a new string which
contains multiple copies of the original string

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 Splitting a String
• split method: returns a list containing
the words in the string
– By default, uses space as separator
– Can specify a different separator by passing it
as an argument to the split method

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 Summary
• This chapter covered:
– String operations, including:
• Methods for iterating over strings
• Repetition and concatenation operators
• Strings as immutable objects
• Slicing strings and testing strings
• String methods
• Splitting a string

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