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Practice

How to Select Specific Ranges from a String

Slicing is a technique used to create a new data structure by selecting a contiguous segment of elements from an existing data structure (like lists or strings).

The slicing operator [:] is used to select or extract specific parts of a string. Through slicing, you can easily obtain particular ranges from a string.


How to Use​

The slicing operator uses square brackets with a start index and an end index separated by a colon (':'). The start index is inclusive, while the end index is exclusive.

Let's look at the example below.

String Slicing Example
text = "The waves of the sea gently come at night"

slice_text_1 = text[0:3]  # "The": from the 0th index 'T' to just before the 3rd index ' '(space)

slice_text_2 = text[17:20]  # "the": from the 17th index 'o' to just before the 20th index 'a'


print("slice_text_1:", slice_text_1)

print("slice_text_2:", slice_text_2)

Various Slicing Techniques​

  • Omitting the Start Index: Slice from the beginning of the string.

  • Omitting the End Index: Slice from the specified start index to the end of the string.

String Slicing Example
text = "The waves of the sea gently come at night"

first_part = text[:3]  # "The"

last_part = text[25:]  # "gently come at night"

reverse_slice = text[::-1]  # "thgin ta emoc yltneg aes eht fo sevaw ehT"


print("first_part:", first_part)

print("last_part:", last_part)

print("reverse_slice:", reverse_slice)

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