Strings

Section 2
Chapter 2

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Quiz 3 Access Code:

• Quizzes will be done at the beginning of each class (10 mins)

• No make up for being late or “technical problems” or other
reasons

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Agenda
• String
• String indices and slicing
• String functions and methods
• String concatenation and repetition

• Output
• sep and end arguments in print()
• Escape sequences
• f-strings

• Lab
String Literals
• The most common types of data processed by Python are strings and numbers.

• Sentences, phrases, words, letters of the alphabet, names, telephone numbers,

addresses, and social security numbers are all examples of strings.

• A string literal is a sequence of characters that is treated as a single item.

• Written as a sequence of characters surrounded by either single quotes (') or
double quotes (").

Opening and closing

quotation marks must
be the same type

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String Variables
• Variables also can be assigned string values

• Print a string
• Quotation marks not included in display

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Indices and Slices
• Position or index of a character in a string
• Identified with one of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . .

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Indices and Slices
• If str1 is a string, then str1[m:n] is the
substring beginning at position m and ending
at position n - 1
• Example “spam & eggs”[2:7]

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find and rfind

If subStr is a string, then str1.find(subStr) is the positive

index of the first appearance of subStr in str1 with the
search beginning at the left side of the string.

The value of str1.rfind(subStr) is the positive index of

the first appearance of subStr in str1 with the search
beginning at the right side of the string.

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Negative Indices
• Python allows strings to be indexed by their position with regards to
the right
• Use negative numbers for indices, starting from -1.

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Negative Indices

Notice that the last character “s” is not included.

If str1 is a string, then str1[m:n] is the substring
beginning at position m and ending at position n – 1.
In this case, −1 − 1 = −2.

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Default Bounds for Slices

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Positive indices start from 0, but not
negative indices… Why?
• Negative Index = Positive Index – Length

• For “e”, its negative index is 7 − 11 = −4

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Indexing and Slicing Out of Bounds
• Python does not allow out of bounds indexing for individual
characters of strings
• Does allow out of bounds indices for slices

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Slicing with skips

Str[m:n:s] If str is a string, then str[m:n] is the substring beginning

• s: step(+: forward; - backward) at position m and ending at position n – 1.

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String Concatenation
• Two strings can be combined to form a new string
• Consisting of the strings joined together
• Represented by a plus sign

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String Repetition
• Asterisk operator can be used with strings to repeatedly
concatenate a string with itself

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String Functions and Methods

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How to remove unnecessary spaces

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Functions vs methods
• A method may alter an object’s state, but Python function usually
only operates on it

• For now, knowing how to apply them is enough.

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Chained Methods
• Lines can be combined into a single line said to chain the
two methods
• Executed from left to right

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Line Continuation
• A long statement can be split across two or more lines
• End each line with backslash character ( \ )

• Alternatively, any code enclosed in a pair of parentheses

can span multiple lines.
• This is preferred style for most Python programmers

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Output
Section 3
Chapter 2

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Optional print Argument sep
• Consider statement
print(value0, value1, …, valueN)

• Print function uses string consisting of one space character as the default
separator

• One can change the separator using the sep argument

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Optional print Argument end
• Print statement ends by executing a newline operation.

• Once can change the ending operation with the end argument.

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Escape Sequences: \t
• Escape sequences are short sequences placed in strings
• Instruct cursor or permit some special characters to be printed.
• First character is always a backslash (\).

• \t induces a horizontal tab

• By default, the tab size is eight spaces
• One can control the tab space with “expandtabs”.

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Escape Sequences: \n
• \n induces a newline operation

• Each escape sequence is treated as a single character.

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Backslash
• Backslash can be used to print
special characters.

• \’ causes print function to display

single quotation mark

• \” causes print function to display

double quotation mark

• \\ causes print function to display

single backslash

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Justifying Output in a Field
• Example: Program demonstrates methods ljust(w),
rjust(w), and center(w)
• w is the number of columns

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Formated string literals
• No need to worry about object types or adjusting for spaces.

• Note that school and year below are variable names

• Their values are displayed in the output.

• f-strings

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f-string

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Kahoot
• Go to https://kahoot.it/

• Enter the game PIN as shown on the classroom projector.

• Enter your 8-digit student ID, E.g., 55123456

Do NOT use names.

• Kahoot is separate from the weekly quiz on Canvas. Kahoot

engagement (not merit) will partially determine class participation
scores.

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Lab 3

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Example A: generate a random letter

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The random module
• The random module can help generate random numbers.

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Example A: generate a random letter

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Example B: n-th letter in the alphabet

Hint: use the method find

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Example B: n-th letter in the alphabet

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Example C: random password

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Example C: random password

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Example C: random password

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Classwork 3: Caesar Cipher

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Classwork 3
#Step 1: Get user inputs.

#Step 2: Find the index of the first letter of the user-entered word in the reference string
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ”.

#Step 3: Add the number of shifts to the above index to get the new index.
# Notice that in some cases, the sum would exceed 26. Use the modulo operator %.

#Step 4: Get the encrypted letter based on the new index.

#Repeat the above steps for the remaining letters in the word.

#Step 5: Combine the three letters.

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Homework 2
#𝒏
𝑐 𝑐 𝑐 𝟏− 𝟏+𝒓
PV = + !
+ ⋯+ "
=𝒄⋅
1+𝑟 1+𝑟 1+𝑟 𝒓

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