Using Python String Methods

For variations.py, we're going to place it in our home directory (~) and we want to make sure that we can run it directly. To keep from being completely tied to the path of our python3.7 binary, we want to set up our shebang properly.

Let's create the file and set the shebang:

~/variations.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3.7

# Python implementation here

With the file created, we need to also make sure that it's executable and we can do this using chmod:

$ chmod u+x ~/variations.py

Next, we'll prompt the user for a message and store it off in a variable.

~/variations.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3.7

message = input("Enter a message: ")

Now if we run the script (./variations.py) it should prompt us for a message, and then exit without any errors.

Now that we have the message variable, we're going to print a few different things to the screen:

• The lowercase version using str.lower
• The uppercase version using str.upper
• The title case version using str.title
• The capitalized version using str.capitalize

Let's use each of these methods combined with the print function:

~/variations.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3.7

message = input("Enter a message: ")

print("Lowercase:", message.lower())
print("Uppercase:", message.upper())
print("Capitalized:", message.capitalize())
print("Title Case:", message.title())

Now we can run the script to make sure that what we've written up to this point is working properly:

$ ./variations.py
Enter a message: This Is My Message
Lowercase: this is my message
Uppercase: THIS IS MY MESSAGE
Capitalized: This is my message
Title Case: This Is My Message

For the remaining requirements of our script, we need to work with the individual words. Because of this, we're going to store the words off as a new variable, words. We can get the words by using the str.split method. After we've separated the message into words, let's also print them out:

~/variations.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3.7

message = input("Enter a message: ")

print("Lowercase:", message.lower())
print("Uppercase:", message.upper())
print("Capitalized:", message.capitalize())
print("Title Case:", message.title())

words = message.split()
print("Words:", words)

Here's the script running so far:

$ ./variations.py
Enter a message: This is a test Message!
Lowercase: this is a test message!
Uppercase: THIS IS A TEST MESSAGE!
Capitalized: This is a test message!
Title Case: This Is A Test Message!
Words: ['This', 'is', 'a','test','Message!']

We're going to sort the words in the words list alphabetically and save the new list to sorted_words by using the sorted built-in function. Lastly, we'll print the alphabetic first and last words. Let's do this by indexing to 0 and -1.

~/variations.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3.7

message = input("Enter a message: ")

print("Lowercase:", message.lower())
print("Uppercase:", message.upper())
print("Capitalized:", message.capitalize())
print("Title Case:", message.title())

words = message.split()
print("Words:", words)

sorted_words = sorted(words)
print("Alphabetic First Word:", sorted_words[0])
print("Alphabetic Last Word:", sorted_words[-1])

Here's the final script running:

$ ./variations.py
Enter a message: This is a test message!
Lowercase: this is a test message!
Uppercase: THIS IS A TEST MESSAGE!
Capitalized: This is a test message!
Title Case: This Is A Test Message!
Words: ['This', 'is', 'a','test','message!']
Alphabetic First Word: This
Alphabetic Last Word: test