9.5. String MethodsΒΆ
We previously saw that each turtle instance has its own attributes and
a number of methods that can be applied to the instance. For example,
we wrote tess.right(90)
when we wanted the turtle object tess
to perform the right
method to turn
to the right 90 degrees. The “dot notation” is the way we connect the name of an object to the name of a method
it can perform.
Strings are also objects. Each string instance has its own attributes and methods. The most important attribute of the string is the collection of characters. There are a wide variety of methods. Try the following program.
In this example, upper
is a method that can be invoked on any string object
to create a new string in which all the
characters are in uppercase. lower
works in a similar fashion changing all characters in the string
to lowercase. (The original string ss
remains unchanged. A new string tt
is created.)
In addition to upper
and lower
, the following table provides a summary of some other useful string methods. There are a few activecode examples that follow so that you can try them out.
Method | Parameters | Description |
---|---|---|
upper | none | Returns a string in all uppercase |
lower | none | Returns a string in all lowercase |
capitalize | none | Returns a string with first character capitalized, the rest lower |
strip | none | Returns a string with the leading and trailing whitespace removed |
lstrip | none | Returns a string with the leading whitespace removed |
rstrip | none | Returns a string with the trailing whitespace removed |
count | item | Returns the number of occurrences of item |
replace | old, new | Replaces all occurrences of old substring with new |
center | width | Returns a string centered in a field of width spaces |
ljust | width | Returns a string left justified in a field of width spaces |
rjust | width | Returns a string right justified in a field of width spaces |
find | item | Returns the leftmost index where the substring item is found |
rfind | item | Returns the rightmost index where the substring item is found |
index | item | Like find except causes a runtime error if item is not found |
rindex | item | Like rfind except causes a runtime error if item is not found |
You should experiment with these methods so that you understand what they do. Note once again that the methods that return strings do not change the original. You can also consult the Python documentation for strings.
Check your understanding
- (A) 0
- There are definitely o and p characters.
- (B) 2
- There are 2 o characters but what about p?
- (C) 3
- Yes, add the number of o characters and the number of p characters.
strings-5-1: What is printed by the following statements?
s = "python rocks"
print(s.count("o") + s.count("p"))
- (A) yyyyy
- Yes, s[1] is y and the index of n is 5, so 5 y characters. It is important to realize that the index method has precedence over the repetition operator. Repetition is done last.
- (B) 55555
- Close. 5 is not repeated, it is the number of times to repeat.
- (C) n
- This expression uses the index of n
- (D) Error, you cannot combine all those things together.
- This is fine, the repetition operator used the result of indexing and the index method.
strings-5-2: What is printed by the following statements?
s = "python rocks"
print(s[1] * s.index("n"))