Python Checking a string s first and last character

Question

can anyone please explain what is wrong with this code   str1   xxx   print str1 if str1  1  startswith           if str1  -1  endswith               print  hi      else          print  condition fails  else      print  bye       The output I got is   Condition fails   but I expected it to print hi instead

User · Answer

You are testing against the string minus the last character    gt  gt  gt    xxx    -1    xxx    Note how the last character  the    is not part of the output of the slice   I think you wanted just to test against the last character  use  -1   to slice for just the last element   However  there is no need to slice here  just use str startswith   and str endswith   directly

User · Answer

When you set a string variable  it doesn t save quotes of it  they are a part of its definition  so you don t need to use  1

User · Answer

When you say   -1  you are stripping the last element  Instead of slicing the string  you can apply startswith and endswith on the string object itself like this  if str1 startswith      and str1 endswith         So the whole program becomes like this       gt  gt  gt  str1     xxx    gt  gt  gt  if str1 startswith      and str1 endswith               print  hi   gt  gt  gt  else          print  condition fails      hi   Even simpler  with a conditional expression  like this   gt  gt  gt  print  hi  if str1 startswith      and str1 endswith      else  fails   hi

User · Answer

You should either use  if str1 0         and str1 -1           or  if str1 startswith      and str1 endswith        but not slice and check startswith endswith together  otherwise you ll slice off what you re looking for

[python] Python Checking a string's first and last character

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