Python memo

String(A google search for "python str" should lead you to the official python.org string methods which lists all the str methods.)

• s.lower(), s.upper() -- returns the lowercase or uppercase version of the string
• s.strip() -- returns a string with whitespace removed from the start and end
• s.isalpha()/s.isdigit()/s.isspace()... -- tests if all the string chars are in the various character classes
• s.startswith('other'), s.endswith('other') -- tests if the string starts or ends with the given other string
• s.find('other') -- searches for the given other string (not a regular expression) within s, and returns the first index where it begins or -1 if not found
• s.replace('old', 'new') -- returns a string where all occurrences of 'old' have been replaced by 'new'
• s.split('delim') -- returns a list of substrings separated by the given delimiter. The delimiter is not a regular expression, it's just text. 'aaa,bbb,ccc'.split(',') -> ['aaa', 'bbb', 'ccc']. As a convenient special case s.split() (with no arguments) splits on all whitespace chars.
• s.join(list) -- opposite of split(), joins the elements in the given list together using the string as the delimiter. e.g. '---'.join(['aaa', 'bbb', 'ccc']) -> aaa---bbb---ccc
• Suppose we have s = "Hello"
  • s[1:4] is 'ell' -- chars starting at index 1 and extending up to but not including index 4
  • s[1:] is 'ello' -- omitting either index defaults to the start or end of the string
  • s[:] is 'Hello' -- omitting both always gives us a copy of the whole thing (this is the pythonic way to copy a sequence like a string or list)
  • s[1:100] is 'ello' -- an index that is too big is truncated down to the string length
    

  
  

  • s[-1] is 'o' -- last char (1st from the end)
  • s[-4] is 'e' -- 4th from the end
  • s[:-3] is 'He' -- going up to but not including the last 3 chars.
  • s[-3:] is 'llo' -- starting with the 3rd char from the end and extending to the end of the string.
  • s[:n] + s[n:] == s
    

List Methods

Here are some other common list methods.

• list.append(elem) -- adds a single element to the end of the list. Common error: does not return the new list, just modifies the original.
• list.insert(index, elem) -- inserts the element at the given index, shifting elements to the right.
• list.extend(list2) adds the elements in list2 to the end of the list. Using + or += on a list is similar to using extend().
• list.index(elem) -- searches for the given element from the start of the list and returns its index. Throws a ValueError if the element does not appear (use "in" to check without a ValueError).
• list.remove(elem) -- searches for the first instance of the given element and removes it (throws ValueError if not present)
• list.sort() -- sorts the list in place (does not return it). (The sorted() function shown below is preferred.)
• list.reverse() -- reverses the list in place (does not return it)
• list.pop(index) -- removes and returns the element at the given index. Returns the rightmost element if index is omitted (roughly the opposite of append()).

Custom Sorting With key=

strs = ['aa', 'BB', 'zz', 'CC']
  print sorted(strs)  ## ['BB', 'CC', 'aa', 'zz'] (case sensitive)
  print sorted(strs, reverse=True)   ## ['zz', 'aa', 'CC', 'BB']

  strs = ['ccc', 'aaaa', 'd', 'bb']
  print sorted(strs, key=len)  ## ['d', 'bb', 'ccc', 'aaaa']

 ## Say we have a list of strings we want to sort by the last letter of the string.
  strs = ['xc', 'zb', 'yd' ,'wa']

  ## Write a little function that takes a string, and returns its last letter.
  ## This will be the key function (takes in 1 value, returns 1 value).
  def MyFn(s):
    return s[-1]

  ## Now pass key=MyFn to sorted() to sort by the last letter:
  print sorted(strs, key=MyFn)  ## ['wa', 'zb', 'xc', 'yd']

  ## "key" argument specifying str.lower function to use for sorting
  print sorted(strs, key=str.lower)  ## ['aa', 'BB', 'CC', 'zz']