Introduction to Strings

 String is a sequence of characters.

 In Python string is an object of str class.
 In many languages, strings are treated as an array of characters.
 But in Python string is an object of str class.
 The String class has lot many constructors.
 The str class
 Strings are the objects of str class
 Create a string using the constructor of str class .

S1=str() #Creates an Empty string Object

S2=str(“Hello”) #Creates a String Object for Hello
Alternative way to create a string object is by assigning a string value to a variable.

S1 = “” # Creates a Empty String

S2=”Hello” # Equivalent to S2=str(“Hello”)
Access the characters of a string one at a time using the index operator
 Python Basic Built-in Functions for String
 min() and max() functions to return largest and smallest character in
a string.
 len() function to return number of characters in a string.
>>> a = "PYTHON"
>>> len(a) #Return length i.e. number of characters in string a
6
>>> min(a) #Return smallest character present in a string
'H'
>>> max(a) #Return largest character present in a string
'Y'
 The Index[] Operator

 The characters in a string can be accessed one at a time through

the index operator.
 The first character of a string is stored at 0th position.
 The last character of a string is stored at position one less than
length of the string.

 Graphical representation how string are stored is shown below.

Continued
Example:
>>> S1="Python"
>>>S1[0] #Access the first element of the string.
'P'
>>>S1[5] #Access the last element of the String.
'n‘
Example:
>>> a='IIT'
>>> a[3]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in <module>
a[3]
IndexError: string index out of range
Access Characters via Negative Index

 Negative index accesses the characters from the end of

the string counting in backward direction.
 The index of last character of any non-empty string is
always -1 as shown below.

Example:
 >>> S="PYTHON"
 >>> S[-1]#Access the last character of a String ‘S’
 'N'
Continued
Example:
S="IIT-Bombay"
>>> S[-3]
>>>‘b’
 Traversing string with for and while Loop
Loop is used to traverse all characters in a string
Program:-To traverse all the elements of a String using for loop.
S="India"
for ch in S:
print(ch,end="") 
Output:
India

Program :-To Traverse every second character of a string using for loop.
S="ILOVEPYTHONPROGRAMMING"
for ch in range(0,len(S),2):#Traverse each Second character
print(S[ch],end=" ")
 
Output:
I O EYH N R GAM N
 Traversing with a while Loop
Programmers can also use while loop to traverse all the elements of a string.

Program : To traverse all the elements of a String using while loop.

S="India"
index=0
while index<len(S):
print(S[index],end="")
index=index+1
Output:
India
 Immutable Strings
Character Sequences fall into two categories such as mutable and immutable .
Mutable means changeable and immutable means unchangeable.
So the strings are immutable sequences of characters.
What happens if you try to change the contents of the string?

Example:
Str1="I Love Python"
Str1[0]="U"
print(Str1)
 
ERROR:
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

one cannot change the existing string.

 The String Operators

 String contains slicing operator, slicing with step sizes operator to obtain subset
of string.
 It also has basic Concatenation ‘+’, ‘in’ and repetition ‘*’ operators.
The following section describes string operators in details

String Slicing Operator [start: end]

The slicing operator returns a subset of a string, called “slice” by specifying two
indices i.e. start and end.
Its syntax is used to return the subset of a string. Syntax is as follows.
Name_of_Variable_of_a_String[Start_Index: End_Index]
Example:
>>> S="IIT-BOMBAY"
>>> S[4:10]#Returns a Subset of a String
'BOMBAY‘
4 to one index less than that of end parameter of slicing operation i.e. 10 - 1 = 9.
 String Slicing With Step Size
 A programmer can select every second character from a string.
 This can be possible using “Step Size”.
 In slicing first two parameters are start index and end index.
 Thus, add third parameter as “Step Size” to select a characters from a string
with step size
 Syntax:
 Name_of_Variable_of_a_String[Start_Index:End_Index:Step_Size]
 Example:
>>>S="IIT-BOMBAY"
>>> S[0:len(S):2]
>>>'ITBMA‘
The statement S[0:len(S):2]indicates to select the portion of string which
starts at index 0, ends on index 10 i.e.
 The String +, * and in Operators
 The + Operator - The concatenation operator ‘+’ is used to join two
Strings.
Example:
>>> S1="IIT " #The String “IIT” assigned to S1
>>> S2="Delhi"#The String “Delhi” assigned to S1
>>> S1+S2
'IIT Delhi'
 The * Operator - The multiplication(*) operator is used to concatenate the
same string multiple times. It is also called as “repetition operator”.
 Example:

>>> S1="Hello"
>>> S2=3*S1#Print the String “Hello” three times
>>> S2
'HelloHelloHello'
 The in and not in Operator
 Both Operators in and not in are used to check whether a string is present in another
string.
 Example:
>>> S1="Information Technology"
#Check if the string “Technology” is present in S1
>>> "Technology" in S1
True

#Check if the string “Technology” is present in S1

>>> "Engineering" in S1
False

>>> S1="Information Technology"

# Check if the string “Hello” is not present in S1
>> "Hello" not in S1
True
 String Operations and Comparisions
 The str class provides different basic methods to perform
various operations on String
 It helps to calculate the length of string
 Retrieve the individual characters from the given string
 Compare and concatenate the two different Strings
 Operators such as ==,<,>,<=,>=and != are used to compare the
strings.
 Python compares strings by comparing their corresponding
characters.
Example:
>>> S1="abcd"
>>> S2="ABCD"
>>> S1>S2
True
 The split() method

 The split() method returns a list of all the words in the string.
 It is used to break up a string into smaller strings.

>>> Str1="C C++ JAVA Python“ #Assigns names of

Programming languages to Str1

>>>Str1.split()

['C , C++, JAVA, Python']

Methods to convert a String to another String
 String may be present in lowercase, or in uppercase.
 But the string with lower case can also be converted to
uppercase and vice-versa using various methods of str
class.
 Various methods to convert a string from one form to
another are as follows.
 str capitalize() Returns the copy of the string with only
the first character capitalized .
 str swapcase() Returns a copy of this string which convert
upper case character to lower case character and lower
case character to upper case character.
Stripping Unwanted characters from a String
 The python provides various methods to remove white
space characters from the front, end or both the end of a
string.
 Note: The characters such as ‘’, \f,\r, and \n are called
as the white space characters.
 The methods to strip leading and trailing white space
characters are given as follows.
 str lstrip() Returns a string with the leading white space
characters removed.
 str rstrip() Returns a string with trailing white space
characters removed.
 Formatting String
 Methods of str Class for formatting characters
 str center(int width) Returns a copy of this string
centered in a field of the given width
 str ljust(int width) Returns a string left justified in a field
of the given width.
 str rjust(int width) Returns a string right justified in a
field of the given width.
 Conclusion
 String is a sequence of characters.
 In Python string is an object of str class.
 Each character within the string can be accessed by positive or
negative index.
 Strings are immutable.
 Various inbuilt methods are used to perform various
operations on strings.
 Unwanted characters can be removed by making use of strip()
function.