MODULE 3

Manipulating Strings:

Working with Strings, Useful String Methods,

Project: Password Locker,
Project: Adding Bullets to Wiki Markup

Reading and Writing Files:

Files and File Paths, The os.path Module, The File Reading/Writing Process, Saving
Variables with the shelve Module,Saving Variables with the print.format() Function,
Project: Generating Random Quiz Files, Project: Multi Clipboard,

Textbook 1: Chapters 6 , 8
Working with Strings

String Literals

● Typing string values in Python code is fairly straightforward:

● They begin and end with a single quote.
● But then how can we use a quote inside a string?

● Typing 'That is Alice's cat.' won’t work, because Python thinks the string ends
after Alice , and the rest ( s cat.' ) is invalid Python code. Fortunately, there are
multiple ways to type strings.

Double Quotes

● Strings can begin and end with double quotes, just as they do with single
quotes.
● One benefit of using double quotes is that the string can have a single quote
character in it. Enter the following into the inter­active shell:

● Since the string begins with a double quote, Python knows that the single quote
is part of the string and not marking the end of the string.
● However, if you need to use both single quotes and double quotes in the string,
you’ll need to use escape characters.

Escape Characters

● An escape character lets you use characters that are otherwise impossible
to put into a string.
● An escape character consists of a backslash ( \ ) followed by the character
you want to add to the string.
● (Despite consisting of two characters, it is commonly referred to as a singular
escape character.)
● For example, the escape character for a single quote is \' .
● You can use this inside a string that begins and ends with single quotes.
● To see how escape characters work, enter the following into the interactive shell:
Raw Strings

● We can place an r before the beginning quotation mark of a string to make it a

raw string.
● A raw string completely ignores all escape characters and prints any
backslash that appears in the string.
● For example, type the following into the interactive shell:

Multiline Strings with Triple Quotes

Multiline Comments
Indexing and Slicing Strings
The in and not in Operators with Strings

String Methods - IMPORTANT !!!

● Several string methods analyze strings or create transformed string values. This section
describes the methods you’ll be using most often.

1. upper() method AND lower() method

● The upper() string methods return a new string where all the letters in the
original string have been converted to uppercase.
● and lower() string methods return a new string where all the letters in the original
string have been converted to uppercase.

NOTE

● Note that these methods do not change the string itself but return new string values. If you want
to change the original string, you have to call upper() or lower() on the string and then assign the
 new string to the variable where the original was stored. This is why you must use spam =
spam.upper() to change the string in spam instead of simply spam.upper() .
● The upper() and lower() methods are helpful if you need to make a case-insensitive comparison.
The strings 'great' and 'GREat' are not equal to
each other.

● When you run this program, the question is displayed, and entering a variation on great , such as
GREat , will still give the output I feel great too .
● Adding code to your program to handle variations or mistakes in user input, such as inconsistent
capitalization, will make your programs easier to use and less likely to fail.

2. isupper() method AND islower() method

● The isupper() methods will return a Boolean True value if the string has at least
one letter and all the letters are uppercase, respectively. Otherwise, the method
returns False .
● The islower() methods will return a Boolean True value if the string has at least
one letter and all the letters are lowercase, respectively. Otherwise, the method
returns False .
 ● Since the upper() and lower() string methods themselves return strings, you can
call string methods on those returned string values as well. Expressions that do
this will look like a chain of method calls. Enter the following into the interactive
shell:

The isX String Methods

● Along with islower() and isupper() , there are several string methods that have
names beginning with the word is. These methods return a Boolean value that
describes the nature of the string. Here are some common isX string methods:

● isalpha() returns True if the string consists only of letters and is not blank.
● isalnum() returns True if the string consists only of letters and numbers and is
not blank.
● isdecimal() returns True if the string consists only of numeric characters and is
not blank.
● isspace() returns True if the string consists only of spaces, tabs, and newlines
and is not blank.
● istitle() returns True if the string consists only of words that begin with an
uppercase letter followed by only lowercase letters.
● The isX string methods are helpful when you need to validate user input. For
example, the following program repeatedly asks users for their age and a
password until they provide valid input.

● In the first while loop, we ask the user for their age and store their input in age .
● If age is a valid (decimal) value, we break out of this first while loop and move on
to the second, which asks for a password.
● Otherwise, we inform the user that they need to enter a number and again ask
them to enter their age.
 ● In the second while loop, we ask for a password, store the user’s input in
password , and break out of the loop if the input was alphanumeric. If it wasn’t,
we’re not satisfied so we tell the user the password needs to be alphanumeric
and again ask them to enter a password.
● When run, the program’s output looks like this:

● Calling isdecimal() and isalnum() on variables, we’re able to test whether the
values stored in those variables are decimal or not, alphanumeric or not. Here,
these tests help us reject the input forty two and accept 42 , and reject secr3t!
and accept secr3t .

The startswith() and endswith() String Methods

● The startswith() methods return True if the string value they are called on
begins with the string passed to the method; otherwise, they return False.
● The endswith() methods return True if the string value they are called on ends
with the string passed to the method; otherwise, they return False.

Enter the following into the inter­active shell:

 ● These methods are useful alternatives to the == equals operator if you need to
check only whether the first or last part of the string, rather than the whole thing,
is equal to another string.

The join() and split() String Methods

● The join() method is useful when you have a list of strings that need to be
joined together into a single string value.
● The join() method is called on a string, gets passed a list of strings, and
returns a string.
● The returned string is the concatenation of each string in the assed-in list.
● For example, enter the following into the interactive shell:

● Notice that the string join() calls on is inserted between each string of the list
argument. For example, when join(['cats', 'rats', 'bats']) is called on the ', ' string,
the returned string is 'cats, rats, bats'.
● Remember that join() is called on a string value and is passed a list value. (It’s
easy to accidentally call it the other way around.)

● The split() method does the opposite: It’s called on a string value and
returns a list of strings. Enter the following into the interactive shell:

● By default, the string 'My name is Simon' is split wherever whitespace characters
such as the space, tab, or newline characters are found.
● These white­space characters are not included in the strings in the returned list.
 ● You can pass a delimiter string to the split() method to specify a different string to
split upon. For example, enter the following into the interactive shell:

● A common use of split() is to split a multiline string along the newline characters.
Enter the following into the interactive shell:

● Passing split() the argument '\n' lets us split the multiline string stored in spam
along the newlines and return a list in which each item corresponds to one line of
the string.

Justifying Text with rjust(), ljust(), and center()

● The rjust() and ljust() string methods return a padded version of the string they
are called on, with spaces inserted to justify the text. The first argument to both
methods is an integer length for the justified string.
 rjust()

● The rjust() method will right align the string, using a specified character
(space is default) as the fill character.

ljust()

● The ljust() method will left align the string, using a specified character
(space is default) as the fill character.

● Enter the following into the interactive shell:

● 'Hello'.rjust(10) says that we want to right-justify 'Hello' in a string of total length

10 . 'Hello' is five characters, so five spaces will be added to its left, giving us a
string of 10 characters with 'Hello' justified right.
● An optional second argument to rjust() and ljust() will specify a fill character other
than a space character. Enter the following into the inter­active shell:
center()

● The center() method will center align the string, using a specified character
(space is default) as the fill character.

● The center() string method works like ljust() and rjust() but centers the text rather
than justifying it to the left or right.
● Enter the following into the interactive shell:
Consider an example program on rjust(), ljust() and center().

Output of the program:

Removing Whitespace with strip(), rstrip(), and lstrip()

● Sometimes you may want to strip off whitespace characters (space, tab, and
newline) from the left side, right side, or both sides of a string.
● strip() : The strip() string method will return a new string without any
whitespace characters at the beginning or end.

● The lstrip() methods will remove whitespace characters from the left ends.

● The rstrip() methods will remove whitespace characters from the right ends.
 ● Enter the following into the interactive shell:

string() - Using Argument:

● Optionally, a string argument will specify which characters on the ends should
be stripped. Enter the following into the interactive shell:

● Passing strip() the argument 'ampS' will tell it to strip occurences of a , m , p ,

and capital S from the ends of the string stored in spam .
● The order of the characters in the string passed to strip() does not matter:
strip('ampS') will do the same thing as strip('mapS') or strip('Spam') .

Copying and Pasting Strings with the pyperclip Module

● The pyperclip module has copy() and paste() functions that can send text
to and receive text from your computer’s clipboard.
● Sending the output of your program to the clipboard will make it easy to
paste it to an email, word processor, or some other software.

● Pyperclip does not come with Python. We have to install the module first. After
installing the pyperclip module, enter the following into the interactive shell:
● Of course, if something outside of your program changes the clipboard contents,
the paste() function will return it. For example, if I copied this sentence to the
clipboard and then called paste() , it would look like this: