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🐍 Python Basics Topic 8 / 100

⏱ 9 min read

Strings

Working with text — creating, combining, indexing, and understanding strings in Python.

"Every message, every name, every sentence your program works with is a string. Text is the most human thing in code."

— ShurAI

What is a String?

A string is a piece of text — a sequence of characters wrapped in quotes. Characters include letters, digits, spaces, and punctuation. You tell Python something is text simply by putting quotes around it.

python

# Single quotes
name = 'Priya'

# Double quotes — same result
city = "Mumbai"

# Triple quotes — for multi-line text
message = """Hello!
Welcome to ShurAI.
Start learning Python today."""

print(type(name))   # <class 'str'>

Single or Double Quotes?

Both work identically. The only time it matters: if your text contains an apostrophe like don't, use double quotes: "don't". If it contains double quotes, use single quotes around it.

Combining Strings — Concatenation

Use + to join strings, and * to repeat a string:

python

first = "Aarav"
last  = "Shah"

full = first + " " + last
print(full)           # Aarav Shah

print("Ha" * 3)       # HaHaHa
print("-" * 20)      # --------------------

Cannot Add String + Number Directly

"Score: " + 95 causes a TypeError. You must convert first: "Score: " + str(95). Or use f-strings (Topic 10) which handle this automatically and cleanly.

String Length with len()

Count every character — letters, spaces, punctuation — all count:

python

print(len("Hello"))        # 5
print(len("Hello World"))  # 11 — space counts!
print(len(""))             # 0  — empty string

Accessing Characters — Indexing

Every character has a position called an index. Python always starts from 0, not 1. Negative indexes count backwards from the end.

String: "Python"

P

0

-6

y

1

-5

t

2

-4

h

3

-3

o

4

-2

n

5

-1

Cyan row = positive index (0 to 5) · Grey row = negative index (-6 to -1)

python

word = "Python"

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

Extracting Parts — Slicing

Get a portion of a string using [start:end]. Start is included, end is not included:

python

text = "Hello World"

print(text[0:5])   # Hello   — index 0,1,2,3,4
print(text[6:])    # World   — index 6 to end
print(text[:5])    # Hello   — start to index 4
print(text[-5:])   # World   — last 5 characters
print(text[::-1])  # dlroW olleH — reversed!

Escape Characters

Special characters you write with a backslash inside a string:

python

print("Line1\nLine2")      # \n = new line
print("Name:\tRiya")       # \t = tab space
print("She said \"Hi\"")  # \" = quote inside string
print("C:\\Users\\Riya")  # \\ = actual backslash

Real Example — Name Tag Generator

python

first = "Sneha"
last  = "Kulkarni"
full  = first + " " + last

print("=" * 24)
print("Full name :", full)
print("Initials  :", first[0] + "." + last[0] + ".")
print("Length    :", len(full))
print("Reversed  :", full[::-1])

output

========================
Full name : Sneha Kulkarni
Initials  : S.K.
Length    : 14
Reversed  : inrakluK ahnenS

"Strings are everywhere in real programs — usernames, messages, search queries. Master them and your programs become truly expressive."

— ShurAI

🧠 Quiz — Question 1

What index does the first character of a Python string have?

🧠 Quiz — Question 2

What does "Go!" * 3 produce?

🧠 Quiz — Question 3

What does "Python"[-1] return?

🧠 Quiz — Question 4

What does "Hello World"[0:5] return?