Working with strings

Joining and measuring text

Strings can be glued together with +. This is called concatenation:

first = "Ada"
last = "Lovelace"
full = first + " " + last     # "Ada Lovelace"

Note the " " in the middle — Python joins exactly what you give it, so if you want a space you have to supply one.

len() tells you how many characters a string contains, spaces included:

len("Ada Lovelace")   # 12

Your turn: build full_name from first_name and last_name with a space between them, then put its length in name_length.

f-strings

Gluing strings together with + gets unreadable quickly, and it breaks the moment one of the pieces is a number. Python's answer is the f-string: put an f before the opening quote, and anything inside {} is evaluated and dropped into the text.

name = "Ada"
age = 36
print(f"{name} is {age} years old")

That prints Ada is 36 years old. No +, no manual spaces, and the number needs no conversion.

You can put any expression inside the braces, not just a name — f"{age + 1}" works.

Two string methods worth knowing now: .upper() and .lower() return a new string in that case, leaving the original alone.

Your turn: build label so it reads PYTHON has 6 letters — the language name uppercased, then its length.