Strings and String Methods

Strings are one of the most commonly used data types in Python. A string is a sequence of characters enclosed in quotes. Python provides a rich set of methods for working with text — searching, slicing, formatting, and transforming.

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Creating Strings

# Single quotes
greeting = 'Hello, World!'

# Double quotes
message = "Python is fun!"

# Triple quotes — multi-line strings
paragraph = """This is a
multi-line string that
spans three lines."""

# Triple single quotes also work
another = '''Same thing
with single quotes.'''

print(greeting)
print(paragraph)

Use double quotes when your string contains an apostrophe, and single quotes when it contains double quotes:

sentence = "It's a beautiful day."
html = '<div class="container">Hello</div>'

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String Indexing

Every character in a string has a position (index), starting from 0:

word = "Python"
#       P y t h o n
#       0 1 2 3 4 5
#      -6-5-4-3-2-1

print(word[0])    # P — first character
print(word[5])    # n — last character
print(word[-1])   # n — last character (negative indexing)
print(word[-2])   # o — second-to-last

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String Slicing

Extract a portion of a string using [start:stop:step]: