CS177 Python Programming

Chapter 5
Sequences: Strings, Lists, and Files

Adapted from John Zelle’s

Book Slides 1
 The String Data Type

• Text is represented in programs by the

string data type.
• A string is a sequence of characters
enclosed within quotation marks (") or
apostrophes (').

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 The String Data Type
>>> str1="Hello"
>>> str2='spam'
>>> print(str1, str2)
Hello spam
>>> type(str1)
<class 'str'>
>>> type(str2)
<class 'str'>

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 The String Data Type
• Getting a string as input

>>> firstName = input("Please enter your name: ")

Please enter your name: John
>>> print("Hello", firstName)
Hello John

• Notice that the input is not evaluated. We want

to store the typed characters, not to evaluate
them as a Python expression.

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 The String Data Type
• We can access the individual characters in
a string through indexing.
• The positions in a string are numbered
from the left, starting with 0.
• The general form is <string>[<expr>],
where the value of expr determines which
character is selected from the string.

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 The String Data Type

H e l l o B o b

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
>>> greet = "Hello Bob"
>>> greet[0]
'H'
>>> print(greet[0], greet[2], greet[4])
Hlo
>>> x = 8
>>> print(greet[x - 2])
B

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 The String Data Type
H e l l o B o b

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
• In a string of n characters, the last character is
at position n-1 since we start counting with 0.
• We can index from the right side using negative
indexes.
>>> greet[-1]
'b'
>>> greet[-3]
'B'

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 The String Data Type
• Indexing returns a string containing a
single character from a larger string.
• We can also access a contiguous
sequence of characters, called a
substring, through a process called slicing.

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 The String Data Type
• Slicing:
<string>[<start>:<end>]
• start and end should both be ints
• The slice contains the substring beginning
at position start and runs up to but
doesn’t include the position end.

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 The String Data Type
H e l l o B o b
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
>>> greet[0:3]
'Hel'
>>> greet[5:9]
' Bob'
>>> greet[:5]
'Hello'
>>> greet[5:]
' Bob'
>>> greet[:]
'Hello Bob'

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 The String Data Type
• If either expression is missing, then the
start or the end of the string are used.
• Can we put two strings together into a
longer string?
• Concatenation “glues” two strings
together (+)
• Repetition builds up a string by multiple
concatenations of a string with itself (*)

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 The String Data Type
• The function len will return the length of a string.
>>> "spam" + "eggs"
'spameggs'
>>> "Spam" + "And" + "Eggs"
'SpamAndEggs'
>>> 3 * "spam"
'spamspamspam'
>>> "spam" * 5
'spamspamspamspamspam'
>>> (3 * "spam") + ("eggs" * 5)
'spamspamspameggseggseggseggseggs'

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 The String Data Type
>>> len("spam")
4
>>> for ch in "Spam!":
print (ch, end=" ")

Spam!

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 The String Data Type

Operator Meaning
+ Concatenation
* Repetition
<string>[] Indexing
<string>[:] Slicing
len(<string>) Length
for <var> in <string> Iteration through characters

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 Simple String Processing
• Usernames on a computer system
– First initial, first seven characters of last name

# get user’s first and last names

first = input("Please enter your first name (all lowercase): ")
last = input("Please enter your last name (all lowercase): ")

# concatenate first initial with 7 chars of last name

uname = first[0] + last[:7]

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Strings, Lists, and Sequences
• It turns out that strings are really a special kind
of sequence, so these operations also apply to
sequences!
>>> [1,2] + [3,4]
[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> [1,2]*3
[1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2]
>>> grades = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'F']
>>> grades[0]
'A'
>>> grades[2:4]
['C', 'D']
>>> len(grades)
5

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 Strings, Lists, and Sequences
• Strings are always sequences of
characters, but lists can be sequences of
arbitrary values.
• Lists can have numbers, strings, or both!

myList = [1, "Spam ", 4, "U"]

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 Strings, Lists, and Sequences
• We can make a list of months:

months = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug",

"Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"]

• To get the months out of the sequence, do

this:
monthAbbrev = months[n-1]

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 Strings, Lists, and Sequences
# month2.py
# A program to print the month name, given it's number.
# This version uses a list as a lookup table.

def main():

# months is a list used as a lookup table

months = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun",
"Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"]

n = eval(input("Enter a month number (1-12): "))

print ("The month abbreviation is", months[n-1] + ".")

main()

• Note that the months line overlaps a line. Python

knows that the expression isn’t complete until
the closing ] is encountered.

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 Strings, Lists, and Sequences
# month2.py
# A program to print the month name, given it's number.
# This version uses a list as a lookup table.

def main():

# months is a list used as a lookup table

months = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun",
"Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"]

n = eval(input("Enter a month number (1-12): "))

print ("The month abbreviation is", months[n-1] + ".")

main()

• Since the list is indexed starting from 0, the n-1

calculation is straight-forward enough to put in
the print statement without needing a separate
step.

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 Strings, Lists, and Sequences
• This version of the program is easy to
extend to print out the whole month name
rather than an abbreviation!
months = ["January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June",
"July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"]

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 Strings, Lists, and Sequences
• Lists are mutable, meaning they can be
changed. Strings can not be changed.
>>> myList = [34, 26, 15, 10]
>>> myList[2]
15
>>> myList[2] = 0
>>> myList
[34, 26, 0, 10]
>>> myString = "Hello World"
>>> myString[2]
'l'
>>> myString[2] = "p"

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<pyshell#16>", line 1, in -toplevel-
myString[2] = "p"
TypeError: object doesn't support item assignment

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Strings and Character Numbers
• Inside the computer, strings are
represented as sequences of 1’s and 0’s,
just like numbers.
• A string is stored as a sequence of binary
numbers, one number per character.
• It doesn’t matter what value is assigned as
long as it’s done consistently.

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Strings and Character Numbers
• In the early days of computers, each
manufacturer used their own encoding of
numbers for characters.
• ASCII system (American Standard Code
for Information Interchange) uses 127 bit
codes
• Python supports Unicode (100,000+
characters)

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Strings and Character Numbers
• The ord function returns the numeric (ordinal)
code of a single character.
• The chr function converts a numeric code to the
corresponding character.
>>> ord("A")
65
>>> ord("a")
97
>>> chr(97)
'a'
>>> chr(65)
'A'

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 Other String Methods
• There are a number of other string
methods. Try them all!
– s.capitalize() – Copy of s with only the first
character capitalized
– s.title() – Copy of s; first character of each
word capitalized
– s.center(width) – Center s in a field of given
width

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 Other String Operations
– s.count(sub) – Count the number of
occurrences of sub in s
– s.find(sub) – Find the first position where sub
occurs in s
– s.join(list) – Concatenate list of strings into
one large string using s as separator.
– s.ljust(width) – Like center, but s is left-
justified

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 Other String Operations
– s.lower() – Copy of s in all lowercase letters
– s.lstrip() – Copy of s with leading whitespace
removed
– s.replace(oldsub, newsub) – Replace
occurrences of oldsub in s with newsub
– s.rfind(sub) – Like find, but returns the right-
most position
– s.rjust(width) – Like center, but s is right-
justified

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 Other String Operations
– s.rstrip() – Copy of s with trailing whitespace
removed
– s.split() – Split s into a list of substrings
– s.upper() – Copy of s; all characters converted
to uppercase

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• Often we will need to do some string
operations to prepare our string data for
output (“pretty it up”)
• Let’s say we want to enter a date in the
format “05/24/2003” and output “May 24,
2003.” How could we do that?

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• Input the date in mm/dd/yyyy format (dateStr)
• Split dateStr into month, day, and year strings
• Convert the month string into a month number
• Use the month number to lookup the month name
• Create a new date string in the form “Month Day,
Year”
• Output the new date string

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• The first two lines are easily implemented!
dateStr = input("Enter a date (mm/dd/yyyy): ")
monthStr, dayStr, yearStr = dateStr.split("/")
• The date is input as a string, and then
“unpacked” into the three variables by
splitting it at the slashes and using
simultaneous assignment.

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• Next step: Convert monthStr into a
number
• We can use the int function on monthStr to
convert "05", for example, into the integer
5. (int("05") = 5)

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation

• Note: eval would work, but for the leading 0

>>> int("05")
5
>>> eval("05")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#9>", line 1, in <module>
eval("05")
File "<string>", line 1
05
^
SyntaxError: invalid token

• This is historical baggage. A leading 0 used to

be used for base 8 (octal) literals in Python.
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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
months = [“January”, “February”, …, “December”]
monthStr = months[int(monthStr) – 1]
• Remember that since we start counting at
0, we need to subtract one from the
month.
• Now let’s concatenate the output string
together!

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
print ("The converted date is:", monthStr, dayStr+",", yearStr)

• Notice how the comma is appended to

dayStr with concatenation!
• >>> main()
Enter a date (mm/dd/yyyy): 01/23/2010
The converted date is: January 23, 2010

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• Sometimes we want to convert a number into a
string.
• We can use the str function.
>>> str(500)
'500'
>>> value = 3.14
>>> str(value)
'3.14'
>>> print("The value is", str(value) + ".")
The value is 3.14.

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• If value is a string, we can concatenate a
period onto the end of it.
• If value is an int, what happens?
>>> value = 3.14
>>> print("The value is", value + ".")
The value is

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<pyshell#10>", line 1, in -toplevel-
print "The value is", value + "."
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'float' and 'str'

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 Input/Output as String
Manipulation
• We now have a complete set of type
conversion operations:
Function Meaning
float(<expr>) Convert expr to a floating point value

int(<expr>) Convert expr to an integer value

str(<expr>) Return a string representation of expr

eval(<string>) Evaluate string as an expression

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 String Formatting
• String formatting is an easy way to get
beautiful output!
Change Counter

Please enter the count of each coin type.

Quarters: 6
Dimes: 0
Nickels: 0
Pennies: 0

The total value of your change is 1.5

• Shouldn’t that be more like $1.50??

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 String Formatting
• We can format our output by modifying the
print statement as follows:
print("The total value of your change is ${0:0.2f}".format(total))

• Now we get something like:

The total value of your change is $1.50

• Key is the string format method.

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 String Formatting
• <template-string>.format(<values>)
• {} within the template-string mark “slots”
into which the values are inserted.
• Each slot has description that includes
format specifier telling Python how the
value for the slot should appear.

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 String Formatting
print("The total value of your change is ${0:0.2f}".format(total)

• The template contains a single slot with

the description: 0:0.2f
• Form of description:
<index>:<format-specifier>
• Index tells which parameter to insert into
the slot. In this case, total.

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 String Formatting
• The formatting specifier has the form:
<width>.<precision><type>
• f means "fixed point" number
• <width> tells us how many spaces to use
to display the value. 0 means to use as
much space as necessary.
• <precision> is the number of decimal
places.

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 String Formatting
>>> "Hello {0} {1}, you may have won ${2}" .format("Mr.", "Smith", 10000)
'Hello Mr. Smith, you may have won $10000'

>>> 'This int, {0:5}, was placed in a field of width 5'.format(7)

'This int, 7, was placed in a field of width 5'

>>> 'This int, {0:10}, was placed in a field of witdh 10'.format(10)

'This int, 10, was placed in a field of witdh 10'

>>> 'This float, {0:10.5}, has width 10 and precision 5.'.format(3.1415926)

'This float, 3.1416, has width 10 and precision 5.'

>>> 'This float, {0:10.5f}, is fixed at 5 decimal places.'.format(3.1415926)

'This float, 3.14159, has width 0 and precision 5.'

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 String Formatting
• If the width is wider than needed, numeric values
are right-justified and strings are left- justified, by
default.
• You can also specify a justification before the
width.
>>> "left justification: {0:<5}.format("Hi!")
'left justification: Hi! '
>>> "right justification: {0:>5}.format("Hi!")
'right justification: Hi!'
>>> "centered: {0:^5}".format("Hi!")
'centered: Hi! '

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 Better Change Counter
• With what we know now about floating
point numbers, we might be uneasy about
using them in a money situation.
• One way around this problem is to keep
trace of money in cents using an int or
long int, and convert it into dollars and
cents when output.

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 Better Change Counter
• If total is a value in cents (an int),
dollars = total//100
cents = total%100
• Cents is printed using width 0>2 to right-
justify it with leading 0s (if necessary) into
a field of width 2.
• Thus 5 cents becomes '05'

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 Better Change Counter
# change2.py
# A program to calculate the value of some change in dollars.
# This version represents the total cash in cents.

def main():
print ("Change Counter\n")

print ("Please enter the count of each coin type.")

quarters = eval(input("Quarters: "))
dimes = eval(input("Dimes: "))
nickels = eval(input("Nickels: "))
pennies = eval(input("Pennies: "))
total = quarters * 25 + dimes * 10 + nickels * 5 + pennies

print ("The total value of your change is ${0}.{1:0>2}"

.format(total//100, total%100))

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 Better Change Counter
>>> main() >>> main()
Change Counter Change Counter

Please enter the count of each coin type. Please enter the count of each coin type.
Quarters: 0 Quarters: 12
Dimes: 0 Dimes: 1
Nickels: 0 Nickels: 0
Pennies: 1 Pennies: 4

The total value of your change is $0.01 The total value of your change is $3.14

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 Files: Multi-line Strings
• A file is a sequence of data that is stored
in secondary memory (disk drive).
• Files can contain any data type, but the
easiest to work with are text.
• A file usually contains more than one line
of text.
• Python uses the standard newline
character (\n) to mark line breaks.

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 Multi-Line Strings
• Hello
World

Goodbye 32
• When stored in a file:
Hello\nWorld\n\nGoodbye 32\n

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 Multi-Line Strings
• This is exactly the same thing as
embedding \n in print statements.
• Remember, these special characters only
affect things when printed. They don’t do
anything during evaluation.

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 File Processing
• The process of opening a file involves
associating a file on disk with an object in
memory.
• We can manipulate the file by
manipulating this object.
– Read from the file
– Write to the file

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 File Processing
• When done with the file, it needs to be
closed. Closing the file causes any
outstanding operations and other
bookkeeping for the file to be completed.
• In some cases, not properly closing a file
could result in data loss.

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 File Processing
• Reading a file into a word processor
– File opened
– Contents read into RAM
– File closed
– Changes to the file are made to the copy
stored in memory, not on the disk.

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 File Processing
• Saving a word processing file
– The original file on the disk is reopened in a
mode that will allow writing (this actually
erases the old contents)
– File writing operations copy the version of the
document in memory to the disk
– The file is closed

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 File Processing
• Working with text files in Python
– Associate a disk file with a file object using
the open function
<filevar> = open(<name>, <mode>)
– Name is a string with the actual file name on
the disk. The mode is either ‘r’ or ‘w’
depending on whether we are reading or
writing the file.
– Infile = open("numbers.dat", "r")

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 File Methods
• <file>.read() – returns the entire remaining
contents of the file as a single (possibly large,
multi-line) string
• <file>.readline() – returns the next line of the file.
This is all text up to and including the next
newline character
• <file>.readlines() – returns a list of the remaining
lines in the file. Each list item is a single line
including the newline characters.

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 File Processing
# printfile.py
# Prints a file to the screen.

def main():
fname = input("Enter filename: ")
infile = open(fname,'r')
data = infile.read()
print(data)

main()

• First, prompt the user for a file name

• Open the file for reading
• The file is read as one string and stored in the variable
data

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 File Processing
• readline can be used to read the next line
from a file, including the trailing newline
character
• infile = open(someFile, "r")
for i in range(5):
line = infile.readline()
print line[:-1]

• This reads the first 5 lines of a file

• Slicing is used to strip out the newline
characters at the ends of the lines

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 File Processing
• Another way to loop through the contents
of a file is to read it in with readlines and
then loop through the resulting list.
• infile = open(someFile, "r")
for line in infile.readlines():
# Line processing here
infile.close()

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 File Processing
• Python treats the file itself as a sequence
of lines!
• Infile = open(someFile, "r")
for line in infile:
# process the line here
infile.close()

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 File Processing
• Opening a file for writing prepares the file
to receive data
• If you open an existing file for writing, you
wipe out the file’s contents. If the named
file does not exist, a new one is created.
• Outfile = open("mydata.out", "w")
• print(<expressions>, file=Outfile)

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 Example Program: Batch
Usernames
• Batch mode processing is where program
input and output are done through files
(the program is not designed to be
interactive)
• Let’s create usernames for a computer
system where the first and last names
come from an input file.

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 Example Program: Batch
Usernames
# userfile.py
# Program to create a file of usernames in batch mode.

def main():
print ("This program creates a file of usernames from a")
print ("file of names.")

# get the file names

infileName = input("What file are the names in? ")
outfileName = input("What file should the usernames go in? ")

# open the files

infile = open(infileName, 'r')
outfile = open(outfileName, 'w')

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 Example Program: Batch
Usernames
# process each line of the input file
for line in infile:
# get the first and last names from line
first, last = line.split()
# create a username
uname = (first[0]+last[:7]).lower()
# write it to the output file
print(uname, file=outfile)

# close both files

infile.close()
outfile.close()

print("Usernames have been written to", outfileName)

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 Example Program: Batch
Usernames
• Things to note:
– It’s not unusual for programs to have multiple files
open for reading and writing at the same time.
– The lower method is used to convert the names into
all lower case, in the event the names are mixed
upper and lower case.

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