Strings

Strings in Python can be used to store a contiguous set of characters. To define a string, you simple type the characters within single or double quotes. For example, newString = ‘Hello world!’ will store that string of characters (Hello world!) in the variable called newString:

>>> newString = 'Hello world!' >>> print (newString) Hello world!

You will get the same result if you use the double quotes to define a string:

>>> newString = "Hello world!" >>> print(newString) Hello world!

The reason why both forms are used is so you can embed a quote character of the other type inside a string. For example, you may embed a single-quote character in a string enclosed in double-quote characters:

>>> newString = "Mark's car" >>> print(newString) Mark's car

Note that you can not perform numeric operations with string variables, even if the string stored in the variable consists only of numbers. Consider the following example:

>>> x = '5' >>> y = '3' >>> print(x + y) 53

The + operator concatenates two strings. To perform an arithmetic operation, we need to convert the string variables to integer or floating-point variables:

>>> x = int('5') >>> y = int('3') >>> print(x + y) 8