Super Simple Python #2 - Strings

While it is quite fun to play with kittens and strings, it's even more fun to play with Python and strings! A string in programming speak is an ordered series of characters. That sounds a whole lot like words to me! Let's play with some strings!

To write a string, take any set of characters and put either double or single quotation marks around it:

>>> 'hi'
'hi'
>>> "howdy"
'howdy'

To Python, there is no difference between using ' and ", as long as you use the same one for that string. Nobody likes mismatched bookends. (Not sure that's a good example, as nobody really likes bookends to begin with.)

We can also assign strings to a variable!

>>> hi_string = 'hi'
>>> hi_string
'hi'

and add them!

>>> hi_string + 'howdy'
'hihowdy'

Let's add a space between those two:

>>> hi_string + ' ' + 'howdy'
'hi howdy'

We can even type whole sentences, punctuation and all:

>>> taunt = "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
>>> taunt
'Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!'

If we need to use an apostrophe in the middle of our sentence, we can either use the double quotation marks:

>>> "It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood."
"It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood."

or we can escape the apostrophe with a backslash (\) so that Python doesn't get confused.

>>> 'It\'s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.'
"It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood."

See? Just as fun as kittens! And to make sure you get that warm and fuzzy feeling: Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Introduction Theme Song