Substrings in Python and Ways You Can Use Them

Python, like many other programming languages, has a string type defined as a sequence of characters that could contain the standard letter characters in text, numeric characters, and special characters. An example of a string is “My address is 123 Main Street,” but just what is a Python substring? This article will introduce you to the concept of a substring, show you multiple ways to extract a substring from a string, and show you how to determine if a substring is present.

What is a Python substring?

If a string is a sequence of characters, a Python substring is simply a sequence of characters within another string. If our string is “I went to the store,” then both “went” and “to the s” are substrings of this string. 

Software developers deal with substrings all the time. They might have a bunch of addresses as strings that end in a five-digit zip code that they want to extract. Or they might want to find a specific make and model of a car in a list of VIN numbers by searching for a substring that exists in that model’s VIN.

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