Scribd
Upload
145 views22 pages

Gaddis Python 4e Chapter 08

Uploaded by

Aseil Nagro
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
145 views22 pages

Gaddis Python 4e Chapter 08

Uploaded by

Aseil Nagro
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 22

CHAPTER 8

More About
Strings

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


Accessing the Individual
Characters 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]
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.
Accessing the Individual
Characters in a String (cont’d.)

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


Accessing the Individual
Characters 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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


Strings Are Immutable
(cont’d.)

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.
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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


String Methods (cont’d.)

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.
String Methods (cont’d.)

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


String Methods (cont’d.)

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.


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

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Ltd.

You might also like