Strings

Strings are a fundamental data type used to represent text. Whether it’s a single character or a paragraph, any text enclosed within either single quotes (' ') or double quotes (" ") is considered a string in Python. Strings serve as the building blocks for text manipulation, and Python equips us with a rich set of built-in methods, or manipulators, to operate on strings. You can perform operations like changing letter cases, slicing (and more) to manipulate and extract valuable information from text data.

Creating a string is straightforward. You assign any alphanumeric value inside single or double quotes to a variable name using the assignment operator (=):

name = "Brad"
location = 'Halifax'
occupation = 'Kubernetes Guy'

Tip

Strings can be enclosed in either single quotes ('') or double quotes (""), allowing you flexibility in your code. Moreover, if a string needs to contain both types of quotes, you can use the backslash (\) as an escape character to ensure Python interprets the characters correctly.

Concatenating Strings

Strings can be combined with simple plus (+) signs:

first_name = "Albert"
last_name = "Einstien"
print("There was a famous scientist named " + first_name + " " + last_name + ".")

Would output:

There was a famous scientist named Albert Einstien.

F-Strings

Introduced in version 3.6 (3.13.3 is current as of Summer 2025), “F-Strings” are a much-improved way to build strings in Python. Simply precede a string with f before the opening quotation. Then, any variable can be surrounded by curly braces {}, removing the need to cast variables of various types. For example:

name = "Jim"
age = 32
print(f"My name is {name} and I am {age} years old!")

Would produce:

My name is Jim and I am 32 years old!

String Methods

Strings can accept methods which alter the contents of the string. Some examples of string methods that are built into Python include:

book_title = "mastery by Robert greene"
print(book_title.upper())
print(book_title.lower())
print(book_title.title())
print(book_title.capitalize())

Returns:

MASTERY BY ROBERT GREENE
mastery by robert greene
Mastery by Robert Greene
Mastery by robert greene

Adding & Removing Whitespace

Special characters can be added to strings that add whitespace. These include:

• \t which adds a tab (4 spaces)
• \n which adds a newline

print("Hello, I'm \t \t Brad!")
print("and you are learning \n \t Python")

Returns:

Hello, I'm       Brad!
and you are learning
     Python

Whitespace can also be stripped out using string methods. These include strip() (both sides), rstrip() (right side), and lstrip() (left side).

name = "      Albert Einstein       "
print("Hello I am " + name + ".") # whitespace remains
print("Hello I am " + name.strip() + ".") # whitespace stripped
print("Hello I am " + name.rstrip() + ".") # whitespace on righ stripped
print("Hello I am " + name.lstrip() + ".") # whitespace on left stripped

Would result with:

Hello I am       Albert Einstein       .
Hello I am Albert Einstein.
Hello I am       Albert Einstein.
Hello I am Albert Einstein       .

Tip

Strings can also be sliced - see Slicing Sequences for more details.