Reverse a String in Python

Welcome to the first installment of Reverse a String in Every Language! In this series, we’ll be implementing string reversal in as many languages as possible. Up first, we reverse a string in Python.

If you don’t know anything about Python, I recommend checking out Hello World in Python. At any rate, let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

Reverse a String in Python

Let’s start by looking at the complete algorithm to reverse a string in Python:

import sys

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    print(sys.argv[1][::-1])

As we can see, we can write a script to reverse a string in about three lines of code. In the following sections, we’ll take a look at a breakdown of each of these lines.

The Python sys Library

In the first line of code, we’ll notice that we’re importing the built-in sys library:

import sys

If you’re unfamiliar with this library, basically it contains functions for interacting directly with the interpreter during runtime.

In our case, we’re leveraging the library to access the command line. From the command line, we can get our string that we’re going to reverse.

The Conditional

After we’ve imported our sys library, this script runs a bit of a sanity check:

if len(sys.argv) > 1:

If we recall from the previous section, we found out that sys gives us access to the command line. We can get the array of command line arguments using argv. According to Python documentation, argv is the list of command line arguments.

With that in mind, it’s clear that we’re just verifying its length. But, why aren’t we just checking to see if the list is empty? That would probably be more efficient and more explicit. Well, as it turns out, the interpreter stores the script name as the first argument, so argv will always contain at least one element.

If we put all that information together, we’ll notice that we only branch if the list of command line arguments contains more than one item. If it does, we know the user has passed us some string.

The Slice & Print

Our last line is a bit terse, but we can handle it:

print(sys.argv[1][::-1])

The first thing to note is the print statement. We’ll probably remember that from our Hello World experience, so no need to dig into that much deeper.

Inside the print statement, we have quite a bit of syntax. First, we access our command line arguments again using sys.argv. However, this time we’re trying to access one of the items using an index of one. Like many languages, Python list indices start from zero, so clearly we’re trying to access our string for reversal.

After that, we’ll notice another piece of interesting syntax: [::-1]. It looks sort of like list access, but it has colons and a negative value. As it turns out, that syntax is called a slice. Typically, slices are used to get a subset of an iterable. For instance, if I wanted the first four characters of a string, I could do the following:

myString = "Hello, World!"
print(myString[:4])  # Prints "Hell"

Okay, maybe that’s not a family friendly example, but you get the idea.

Now, with a single colon, we can slice between any two indices. With a second colon, we can declare the step. For example, maybe we want every other character in a string:

myString = "Hello, World!"
print(myString[::2])  # Prints "Hlo ol!"

As an added wrinkle, we can step backwards through the string using a negative value. That’s exactly how we reverse the string in our example.

So, let’s put it all together. We get our string off the command line, take a slice of it backwards, and print the result. How cool is that?

How to Run the Solution

To run the Reverse a String in Python program, grab a copy of the Python file from GitHub. After that, get the latest version of Python. Now, all you have to do is run the following from the command line:

python reverse-string.py "Hello, World!"

Alternatively, you can always copy the source code into an online Python interpreter. Just make sure you pass some input to your script before you run it.

Sample Programs in Every Language

And, there you have it! We’ve successfully written a program to reverse a string in Python.

If you liked this article, don’t forget to give it a share. Also, remember that you can contribute to this series by dropping your suggestions in the comments or forking the GitHub repository (see below).

Sample Programs in Every Language (44 Articles)—Series Navigation

For 100 Days of Code, I’ve decided to implement a few sample programs in as many languages as possible. Each implementation details a brief history of the language and a description of the code.

The plan for the series is to explore the major general-purpose language like Java, Python, C, C++, and C#. From there, we’ll take a look at some sample programs in web development languages like Ruby, PHP, and JavaScript. As we continue, we’ll cover proprietary languages like Swift and Objective-C. Eventually, we’ll start to tackle less popular languages like Rust, x86, and Verilog. Finally, we’ll play around with some of the esoteric languages like Brainf*ck and LOLCODE.

Who knows? Maybe the Sample Programs in Every Language series will become so popular it’ll never end. To help this series grow, consider sharing it on social media with your friends. Or, if you have a language you want to see, drop your suggestion in the comments.

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