Strings#

String in Python is:

sequence of characters enclosed in quotes
immutable ordered data type

Examples of strings:

In [9]: 'Hello'
Out[9]: 'Hello'
In [10]: "Hello"
Out[10]: 'Hello'

In [11]: tunnel = """
   ....: interface Tunnel0
   ....:  ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0
   ....:  ip mtu 1416
   ....:  ip ospf hello-interval 5
   ....:  tunnel source FastEthernet1/0
   ....:  tunnel protection ipsec profile DMVPN
   ....: """

In [12]: tunnel
Out[12]: '\ninterface Tunnel0\n ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0\n ip mtu 1416\n ip ospf hello-interval 5\n tunnel source FastEthernet1/0\n tunnel protection ipsec profile DMVPN\n'

In [13]: print(tunnel)

interface Tunnel0
 ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0
 ip mtu 1416
 ip ospf hello-interval 5
 tunnel source FastEthernet1/0
 tunnel protection ipsec profile DMVPN

Strings can be summed. Then they merge into one string:

In [14]: intf = 'interface'

In [15]: tun = 'Tunnel0'

In [16]: intf + tun
Out[16]: 'interfaceTunnel0'

In [17]: intf + ' ' + tun
Out[17]: 'interface Tunnel0'

You can multiply a string by a number. In this case, string repeats specified number of times:

In [18]: intf * 5
Out[18]: 'interfaceinterfaceinterfaceinterfaceinterface'

In [19]: '#' * 40
Out[19]: '########################################'

The fact that strings are an ordered data type allows to refer to characters in a string by a number starting from zero:

In [20]: string1 = 'interface FastEthernet1/0'

In [21]: string1[0]
Out[21]: 'i'

All characters in a string are numbered from zero. But if you need to refer to a character from the end, you can specify negative values (this time with 1).

In [22]: string1[1]
Out[22]: 'n'

In [23]: string1[-1]
Out[23]: '0'

In addition to referring to a specific character you can make string slices by specifying a number range. Slicing starts with first number (included) and ends at second number (excluded):

In [24]: string1[0:9]
Out[24]: 'interface'

In [25]: string1[10:22]
Out[25]: 'FastEthernet'

If no second number is specified, slice is until the end of string:

In [26]:  string1[10:]
Out[26]: 'FastEthernet1/0'

Slice last three character of string:

In [27]: string1[-3:]
Out[27]: '1/0'

You can also specify a step in slice. For example, you can get odd numbers:

In [28]: a = '0123456789'

In [29]: a[1::2]
Out[29]: '13579'

Or you can get all even numbers of string a:

In [31]: a[::2]
Out[31]: '02468'

Slices can also be used to get a string in reverse order:

In [28]: a = '0123456789'

In [29]: a[::]
Out[29]: '0123456789'

In [30]: a[::-1]
Out[30]: '9876543210'

Note

Entries a[::] and a[:] give the same result but double colon makes it possible to indicate that not every element should be taken, but for example every second element.

The len function allows you to get number of characters in a string:

In [1]: line = 'interface Gi0/1'

In [2]: len(line)
Out[2]: 15

Note

Function and method differ in that method is tied to a particular type of object and function is generally more universal and can be applied to objects of different types. For example, len function can be applied to strings, lists, dictionaries and so on, but startswith method only applies to strings.