Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Python string find()
method effectively to find a substring in a string.
Introduction to Python string find() method
The find()
is a string method that finds a substring in a string and returns the index of the substring.
The following illustrates the syntax of the find()
method:
str.find(sub[, start[, end]])
Code language: CSS (css)
The find()
method accepts three parameters:
sub
is the substring to look for in thestr
.start
andend
parameters are interpreted as in the slicestr[start:end]
, which specifies where to search for the substringsub
.
Both start
and end
parameters are optional. The start
parameter defaults to zero. And the end
parameter defaults to the length-1
where length
is the length of the str
.
If the str
doesn’t contain the substring sub
within the slice str[start:end]
, the find()
method returns -1.
In practice, you should use the find()
method only if you want to know the position of the substring. If you just want to check whether a string contains a substring, you should use the in
operator instead:
sub in str
Python string find() method examples
Let’s take some examples of using the find()
method.
1) Using the Python string find() method to find a substring in a string
The following example shows how to use the find()
method to find the substring 'Johny'
in the string 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
:
s = 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
result = s.find('Johny')
print(result)
Code language: PHP (php)
Output:
0
Because the string 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
has two substrings 'Johny'
, the find()
method returns the index of the first occurrence of the substring 'Johny'
.
2) Using the Python string find() method to find a substring in a string within a slice
The following example uses the find()
method to locate the substring 'Johny'
in the string 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
within the slice str[1:]
:
s = 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
result = s.find('Johny', 1)
print(result)
Code language: PHP (php)
Output:
6
In this example, the find()
method returns the index of the second occurrence of the substring 'Johny'
in the string 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
.
3) The substring doesn’t exist in the string example
The following example returns -1 because the substring 'Julia'
doesn’t exist in the string 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
:
s = 'Johny Johny Yes Papa'
result = s.find('Julia')
print(result)
Code language: PHP (php)
Output:
-1
Summary
- Use Python string
find()
to find a substring in a string. - The
find()
method returns -1 if the substring is not found.