Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Well done!
You have completed Python Basics!
You have completed Python Basics!
Preview
Let's explore Strings and how to concatenate them together
This video doesn't have any notes.
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
I like to imagine string just like a
banner you might see at a party with each
0:00
letter strung together.
0:04
That's really what a string is, right?
0:06
It's a series of characters.
0:08
The string data type provides some very
handy methods that I'd like you to get
0:10
familiar with.
0:13
After you create a string,
it cannot be changed.
0:14
This is what is known as immutable or
impossible to modify.
0:19
I'll remind you of this as we
look at some of these examples.
0:23
Why don't we pop open a shell and
I can show you what I'm talking about.
0:26
So, string literals, they can be made
with either single or double quotes.
0:30
And I can imagine that you
might say something like this.
0:35
You could say, 'I cannot understand
why you need two options for quotes'.
0:38
Totally understand why you
might say something like that.
0:47
But that's probably a little bit formal,
isn't it?
0:50
We should probably use a conjunction.
0:52
How about we say something like,
'I can't understand'.
0:54
Oops, that's a problem, right?
0:59
We've got a quote inside of the quote.
1:04
We got a single quote, we are trying
to use a single quote, uh-oh.
1:06
Now, option is that you
can actually make it so
1:09
the quote is ignored by doing
something called escaping.
1:13
So the backslash starts what is
known us an escape sequence.
1:16
So the backslash, and
1:21
then a quote, basically tells
the interpreter to treat that quote
1:22
like a character instead of treating
it like part of the syntax, right?
1:26
So if I do, can\ 't understand,
now it will see.
1:30
But, I mean this is kinda ugly, isn't it?
1:36
This backslash t.
1:38
Are you glad there's two
types of quotes yet?
1:40
And actually, look, the REPL fixed it.
1:42
So you can use quotes like that.
1:44
So if you use double quotes,
1:45
then you could very easily use
the single quote inside of it, like so.
1:48
Now we can say, "I can't", right?
1:52
There's a nice string.
1:55
And actually,
escape sequences are great for
1:58
adding blank lines inside of your string.
2:00
So there's a special one that you'll see.
2:03
If we come over here and we go up,
let's get this I can't back here.
2:05
Let's say "I can't..., and
then we wanna add a new line.
2:10
And so that escape sequence to add
a new blank line is \n for new line.
2:14
So we'd add two, two blank lines and
we'll say, I can't even.
2:20
And the REPL here is playing tricks on us.
2:25
It's trying really hard to keep
things on one line for us.
2:30
But actually if you print that string; so
we'll go ahead and say we'll print.
2:32
And then we'll get back the result
that was just there, right?
2:35
So we use the underscore.
2:38
So you'll see that it is actually
I can't new line new line even.
2:39
There's our new lines.
2:43
My wife says that to me all the time while
shaking her head about my dad jokes.
2:44
You're not the only one.
2:47
I suppose,
I should quote her though, right?
2:50
So I would say, "She said,.
2:52
[LAUGH] I can't, so now what?
2:58
Now we've got a single quote and
a double quote in here.
3:00
So actually, triple quotes
allow you to start the string.
3:04
So we could say, """She said, "I can't...
3:11
And the nice thing about triple
quotes is it allows you to have
3:17
spaces in your string.
3:20
So we can press like this and
see those triple dots over here.
3:21
That means, it's waiting for me to,
it's waiting for those final three quotes.
3:23
So we can say, "I can't...
3:28
even.", so she said that.
3:30
And still,
there's another quote there, right?
3:31
So I'm ending that quote and then it's
waiting for three quotes to end it.
3:34
So there we go, and if I say, go up
a couple times here, we say, print (_).
3:40
She said "I can't...
3:46
even.", that's what she said.
3:47
All right, so
now that we got creation out of the way,
3:49
let's look at combining
some strings together.
3:52
What if I had a string like this word,
here, chocolate?
3:56
Now we can actually combine it together
with another string using a plus sign.
4:00
So I can say, "chocolate" + "marshmallow".
4:06
And you'll see what it
returned was a brand new
4:11
string with the two words pushed together.
4:15
This is called concatenation.
4:19
Now, it's important to remember when
you're concatenating strings to include
4:22
the proper spacing.
4:26
Otherwise, it will be
slammed together like this.
4:27
So what we want is
probably more like this,
4:29
"chocolate' + " and
4:33
marshmallows".
4:38
There we go, that feels good.
4:43
And of course,
we can store that new string that
4:45
was created in a variable, right?
4:49
So, we could say desert =
"chocolate" + " and marshmallows".
4:53
So that was a new string created and
then we labeled it with dessert.
5:01
And we can use that variable
to create a brand new one.
5:06
This is called reassigning.
5:09
So as I dessert = dessert + " and
graham crackers".
5:10
And now, that might look like
we changed the variable dessert.
5:23
But what happened was that this statement,
dessert + " and
5:27
graham crackers", created a new string.
5:30
And we removed our already existing
label and put it on the new string.
5:32
We reassigned it.
5:38
The old string,
since it didn't have a label,
5:39
is essentially thrown away,
like those leftovers in my office fridge.
5:42
Remember, we didn't actually change the
original string because we can't, right?
5:46
And that's because strings are immutable.
5:51
This appending of more text to
the end of a string is pretty common.
5:54
So there is a shortcut
called in-place addition.
5:58
So if we say dessert, we can say +=.
6:02
And basically,
that's just like the line above.
6:05
It's saying dessert = dessert + and
then whatever we do.
6:07
So we say += ", yum.
6:11
And if we take a look, 'chocolate and
marshmallows and graham crackers, yum'.
6:15
So [LAUGH] that needs some
exclamation points, am I right?
6:21
And I want some more than just a couple.
6:25
I don't wanna just add
a whole bunch of them myself.
6:27
I'd rather do that in code.
6:29
So that's where the asterisk
comes into play.
6:31
So check this out.
6:34
If I want to repeat the string, well,
6:35
here's the string,
I can then do a * for multiplication.
6:38
I say do that 20 times.
6:43
Awesome.
6:45
In addition to exclamations,
this is really handy for
6:47
trying to draw layouts in text.
6:49
So let's append those.
6:52
So we'll say dessert, and
we'll do an in-place addition, so dessert,
6:53
basically, that's desert +=,
and we'll say "!" * 20.
6:59
And there we go.
7:04
Now before I append some more
string information in your brain,
7:06
let's take a quick break and
return to talk some more about strings.
7:09
We'll talk about various handy
methods that a string provides.
7:13
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up