What is append() in Python and how does it work
The append() function allows you to append text to the end of another string. It is an important concept in Python programming. The most common way to use the function is by adding text to the end of a string, but it can also be used in other ways, such as appending text at both the beginning and end.
If you are a beginner to Python programming, it is probably important to understand the syntax for the append() function. Let’s look at this in more detail.
The syntax for the append() function in Python is as follows:
append(“text”) + “more text” (whole block of text) << list("whole block of text") + "more whole block of text" >> string(“whole block of text”) + “more trailing” string(“whole block of text”).append(“whole block of text”) + “more append” string(“whole block of text”) + “more append side” string(“whole block of text”) + “more trailing side”
You can see that the syntax is quite straightforward, but being able to understand the blocks of text is important if you have any intention of creating useful structures and strings in Python. You don’t want to end up with unreadable strings. So let’s look at a few examples demonstrating what this looks like in practice.
Examples of how to use append() in Python
If there are zero or more elements to be appended, then the function will return the original string. e.g:
>>> “Hello” + “World”
‘Hello World’
>>> “” + “Hello” + “World”
‘this is a string with two elements’
“””append to front of list python””” : “””Examples of how to use append() in Python”””. In this example, the function will return a new list containing the original strings, appended together. e.g:
>>> my_list = [1,2,3] >>> my_list.append(“Tango”) >>> print(my_list) [‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘Tango’]
{ARTICLE END}
The above code can be used on a python notebook in an IPython environment such as Jupyter.
Copy the above text in the IPython notebook “Cell” and now we can paste it in another cell by doing Shift + Command + V or Ctrl + Shift + V . Now we can see a list of “Examples of how to use append() in Python”.
When to use append() in Python instead of other methods
append() is the function to use when you want to add text to the end of a string. Other Python functions, such as concatenation using an ampersand ( & ), comma ( , ), and repeated concatenation, use different methods that may not always add text to the end of a string. Also, append() is one of the few ways to add text to a string at the beginning. The other methods all add text to the end of a string.
In Python, the append() method of a string object adds text to the end of a string it is called on.
It takes an argument that specifies the number of characters to be added. If there is not enough room for all the characters in the string, the last few characters are truncated instead of being lost entirely.
Use this method when you want to add text to the end of a string.
It may be a good idea to add text to the end of the string before calling append(). For example, if you want to increment every odd position in a string, you need to iterate through your string with one character in each iteration. If you concatenate the strings together, like this:
my_string = “ABC” # Integer division of my_string with only even positions my_string += “123” # Python 3.x print (my_string) # Output: ABC 123 123 123 123 …
then you’ll see this output:
ABC 123 123 123 123 … ABC 123 ABC 124 ABC 125 …
