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Home / IT & Computer Science / Coding & Programming / Scratch to Python: Moving from Block- to Text-based Programming / Playing with strings
Playing with strings
Create song lyrics by manipulating strings
In the previous step, you learnt how to manipulate a string using a special type of function called a method. You used the split method to split the string, a, e, i, o, u, into a list by passing a comma as the argument to the split method. Let’s explore some more useful string methods that you can use.
You can use the lower method to convert any text into all lowercase. So for example, here is a phrase and it’s all in capitals. And I’m going to create a new variable. And I’m going to use the lower method to convert all of that text into lowercase. If I print it, what we’ll see is when I print, the text is the same, it’s just all in lowercase. You can also use the replace method to replace any given string with any other string. So for example, I’ve created a phrase, I wandered lonely as a cloud. And I can create a new variable, which is based on the original one.
And I’m going to use the replace method to change the text cloud into clown.
And I’m going to print that to the screen.
When we run our program, what we see is our original. And we see the replaced version where cloud has been replaced with clown. And by adding more replace statements to this program and printing them out, I can turn my original phrase, I wandered lonely as a cloud to I juggled wildly as a clown. Now your challenge is to use the replace method to print out the nursery rhyme, The Wheels on the Bus. There are lots of different ways to do this. And the original verse looks like this. You can see how I’ve used three quotes to create a string which spans multiple lines.
Now I could use the replace method to swap wheels for horn and round and round for beep, beep, beep. Now can you write a program to print out the first two verses of the wheels on a bus in Python? You could also add more verses, such as where the wipers go swish, swish, swish and the people go up and down. Share your solutions in the comments section. And don’t forget to help each other out if anyone gets stuck. Good luck.
You’ve already tried out a few of Python’s built-in functions, such as To make a method act on an object, place the method name after the object, with a full stop in between.There are lots of string methods to play around with, all built into the Python language — unlike in Scratch where you would have to create your own blocks or import an extension. For a full list with explanations, have a look at this page in the Python documentation.If you run this program, you get the following output:Notice how three quotes have been used to make a string that uses multiple lines.I can use
str() and int(). You’ve also had a look at some functions from imported modules, for example choice() from the random module. In this section you’re going to look at some different ways you can manipulate strings in Python; hopefully you’ll find this much easier to do compared to using Scratch.Methods
A method is a special type of function that can be used on certain types of object. In Python, everything is an object, so there are lots of different methods that can be used.You’ve already briefly seen one such method, calledsplit(), when you used it on a string in the previous step.vowels = "a e i o u"
list_of_vowels = vowels.split()
print(list_of_vowels)
Changing case
Here’s another method that can be used on strings — try it out to see what it does.angry = 'THIS IS SOME TEXT'
calm = angry.lower()
print(calm)
Splitting strings
Some methods can take arguments inside the brackets..split() is an example of one of these methods. Have a go at running this code:vowels = "a,e,i,o,u"
list_of_vowels = vowels.split(',')
print(list_of_vowels)
Replacing strings
This is a little programming task that uses some string methods to do something interesting.The.replace() method can replace any given substring with another string. For example:original = 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'
new_1 = original.replace('cloud', 'clown')
new_2 = new_1.replace('wandered', 'juggled')
new_3 = new_2.replace('lonely', 'wildly')
print(original)
print(new_1)
print(new_2)
print(new_3)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
I wandered lonely as a clown
I juggled lonely as a clown
I juggled wildly as a clown
The wheels on the bus
I am going ask you to use the.replace() method to print out the nursery rhyme The wheels on the bus.There are lots of different ways this can be accomplished, but I am going to start with the simplest algorithm. The original verse will be as follows:verse = """
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
Round and round, round and round,
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
All day long.
"""
.replace() to replace all occurrences of wheels with horn, and store this as a new variable. Then I can use .replace() again to replace round and round with beep, beep, beep. Then print out the original verse, followed by the new verse.Task
- Write a program to print out the first two verses of The wheels on the bus in Python.
- Can you add to your program to include the other verses where the
wipers go swish, swish, swishand thepeople go up and down?
This article is from the online course:
Scratch to Python: Moving from Block- to Text-based Programming
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Scratch to Python: Moving from Block- to Text-based Programming
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