review Questions 453

8.17 Write a loop that counts the number of uppercase characters that appear in the
string referenced by the variable mystring.
8.18 Assume the following statement appears in a program:
days = 'Monday Tuesday Wednesday'
Write a statement that splits the string, creating the following list:
['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday']
8.19 Assume the following statement appears in a program:
values = 'one$two$three$four'
Write a statement that splits the string, creating the following list:
['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']

Review Questions
Multiple Choice
1. This is the first index in a string.
a. −1
b. 1
c. 0
d. The size of the string minus one
2. This is the last index in a string.
a. 1
b. 99
c. 0
d. The size of the string minus one
3. This will happen if you try to use an index that is out of range for a string.
a. A ValueError exception will occur.
b. An IndexError exception will occur.
c. The string will be erased and the program will continue to run.
d. Nothing—the invalid index will be ignored.
4. This function returns the length of a string.
a. length
b. size
c. len
d. lengthof
5. This string method returns a copy of the string with all leading whitespace characters
removed.
a. lstrip
b. rstrip
c. remove
d. strip_leading
454 Chapter 8 More about Strings

6. This string method returns the lowest index in the string where a specified substring
is found.
a. first_index_of
b. locate
c. find
d. index_of
7. This operator determines whether one string is contained inside another string.
a. contains
b. is_in
c. ==
d. in
8. This string method returns true if a string contains only alphabetic characters and is
at least one character in length.
a. the isalpha method
b. the alpha method
c. the alphabetic method
d. the isletters method
9. This string method returns true if a string contains only numeric digits and is at least
one character in length.
a. the digit method
b. the isdigit method
c. the numeric method
d. the isnumber method
10. This string method returns a copy of the string with all leading and trailing whitespace
characters removed.
a. clean
b. strip
c. remove_whitespace
d. rstrip

True or False
1. Once a string is created, it cannot be changed.
2. You can use the for loop to iterate over the individual characters in a string.
3. The isupper method converts a string to all uppercase characters.
4. The repetition operator (*) works with strings as well as with lists.
5. When you call a string’s split method, the method divides the string into two
substrings.

Short Answer
1. What does the following code display?
mystr = 'abc'
mystr2 = '123'
mystr += mystr2
print(mystr)
 review Questions 455

2. What does the following code display?

mystr = 'abc' * 3
print(mystr)
3. What will the following code display?
mystr = 'abracadabra'
print(mystr[6:9])
4. What does the following code display?
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
print(numbers[4:6])
5. What does the following code display?
name = 'joe'
print(name.lower())
print(name.upper())
print(name)

Algorithm Workbench
1. Assume choice references a string. The following if statement determines whether
choice is equal to ‘Y’ or ‘y’:
if choice == 'Y' or choice == 'y':
Rewrite this statement so it only makes one comparison, and does not use the or
operator. (Hint: use either the upper or lower methods.)
2. Write a loop that counts the number of space characters that appear in the string ref-
erenced by mystring.
3. Write a loop that counts the number of alphanumeric characters (letters or digits) that
appear in the string referenced by mystring.
4. Write a loop that counts the number of lowercase characters that appear in the string
referenced by mystring.
5. Write a function that accepts a string as an argument and returns true if the argument
starts with the substring 'https'. Otherwise, the function should return false.
6. Write code that makes a copy of a string with all occurrences of the lowercase letter
't' converted to uppercase.
7. Write a function that accepts a string as an argument and displays the string back-
wards.
8. Assume mystring references a string. Write a statement that uses a slicing expression
and displays the first 3 characters in the string.
9. Assume mystring references a string. Write a statement that uses a slicing expression
and displays the last 3 characters in the string.
10. Look at the following statement:
levels = 'Beginner, Average, Advanced, Expert'
Write a statement that splits this string, creating the following list:
['Beginner', 'Average', 'Advanced', 'Expert']
456 Chapter 8 More about Strings

Programming Exercises
1. Name Display
Write a program that gets strings containing a person’s first and last name as separate
values, and then displays their “initials”, “name in address book”, and “username”. For
example, if the user enters a first name of “John” and a last name of “Smith”, the program
should display “J.S.”, “John SMITH”, and “jsmith”.
2. Sum of Digits in a String
Write a program that asks the user to enter a series of single-digit numbers with nothing
separating them. The program should display the sum of all the single digit numbers in the
string. For example, if the user enters 2514, the method should return 12, which is the sum
of 2, 5, 1, and 4.
3. Date Printer
Write a program that reads a string from the user containing a date in the form mm/dd/yyyy.
It should print the date in the format March 12, 2018.
4. Morse Code Converter
Morse code is a code where each letter of the English alphabet, each digit, and various
punctuation characters are represented by a series of dots and dashes. Table 8-4 shows part
of the code.
Write a program that asks the user to enter a string, then converts that string to Morse code.

Table 8-4 Morse code

Character Code Character Code Character Code Character Code
space space 6 –.... G ––. Q ––.–
comma ––..–– 7 ––... H .... R .–.
period .–.–.– 8 –––.. I .. S ...
question mark ..––.. 9 ––––. J .––– T –
0 ––––– A .– K –.– U ..–
1 .–––– B –... L .–.. V ...–
2 ..––– C –.–. M –– W .––
3 ...–– D –.. N –. X –..–
4 ....– E . O ––– Y –.–
5 ..... F ..–. P .––. Z ––..
 Programming Exercises 457

5. Alphabetic Telephone Number Translator

Many companies use telephone numbers like 555-GET-FOOD so the number is easier for
their customers to remember. On a standard telephone, the alphabetic letters are mapped to
numbers in the following fashion:
A, B, and C = 2
D, E, and F = 3
G, H, and I = 4
J, K, and L = 5
M, N, and O = 6
P, Q, R, and S = 7
T, U, and V = 8
W, X, Y, and Z = 9
Write a program that asks the user to enter a 10-character telephone number in the for-
mat XXX-XXX-XXXX. The application should display the telephone number with any
alphabetic characters that appeared in the original translated to their numeric equiva-
lent. For example, if the user enters 555-GET-FOOD, the application should display
555-438-3663.

6. Average Number of Words

If you have downloaded the source code from the Premium Companion Website you will
find a file named text.txt in the Chapter 08 folder. The text that is in the file is stored
as one sentence per line. Write a program that reads the file’s contents and calculates the
average number of words per sentence.
(You can access the Premium Companion Website at www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/gaddis.)
7. Character Analysis
If you have downloaded the source code you will find a file named text.txt in the Chapter 08
folder. Write a program that reads the file’s contents and determines the following:
• The number of uppercase letters in the file
• The number of lowercase letters in the file
• The number of digits in the file
• The number of whitespace characters in the file
8. Sentence Capitalizer
Write a program with a function that accepts a string as an argument and returns a copy
of the string with the first character of each sentence capitalized. For instance, if the argu-
ment is “hello. my name is Joe. what is your name?” the function should return the string
“Hello. My name is Joe. What is your name?” The program should let the user enter
a string and then pass it to the function. The modified string should be displayed.
9. Vowels and Consonants
VideoNote
The Vowels and Write a program with a function that accepts a string as an argument and returns the
Consonants problem
number of vowels that the string contains. The application should have another function
458 Chapter 8 More about Strings

that accepts a string as an argument and returns the number of consonants that the string
contains. The application should let the user enter a string, and should display the number
of vowels and the number of consonants it contains.
10. Most Frequent Character
Write a program that lets the user enter a string and displays the character that appears most
frequently in the string.
11. Word Separator
Write a program that accepts as input a sentence in which all of the words are run together,
but the first character of each word is uppercase. Convert the sentence to a string in which
the words are separated by spaces, and only the first word starts with an uppercase letter. For
example the string “StopAndSmellTheRoses.” would be converted to “Stop and smell
the roses.”

12. Pig Latin

Write a program that accepts a sentence as input and converts each word to “Pig Latin.” In
one version, to convert a word to Pig Latin, you remove the first letter and place that letter
at the end of the word. Then, you append the string “ay” to the word. Here is an example:
English: I SLEPT MOST OF THE NIGHT
Pig Latin: IAY LEPTSAY OSTMAY FOAY HETAY IGHTNAY
13. PowerBall Lottery
To play the PowerBall lottery, you buy a ticket that has five numbers in the range of 1–69,
and a “PowerBall” number in the range of 1–26. (You can pick the numbers yourself, or you
can let the ticket machine randomly pick them for you.) Then, on a specified date, a winning
set of numbers is randomly selected by a machine. If your first five numbers match the first
five winning numbers in any order, and your PowerBall number matches the winning Pow-
erBall number, then you win the jackpot, which is a very large amount of money. If your
numbers match only some of the winning numbers, you win a lesser amount, depending on
how many of the winning numbers you have matched.
In the student sample programs for this book, you will find a file named pbnumbers.txt,
containing the winning PowerBall numbers that were selected between February 3, 2010
and May 11, 2016 (the file contains 654 sets of winning numbers). Figure 8-6 shows an
example of the first few lines of the file’s contents. Each line in the file contains the set of six
numbers that were selected on a given date. The numbers are separated by a space, and the
last number in each line is the PowerBall number for that day. For example, the first line in
the file shows the numbers for February 3, 2010, which were 17, 22, 36, 37, 52, and the
PowerBall number 24.
 Programming Exercises 459

Figure 8-6 the pbnumbers.txt file

Write one or more programs that work with this file to perform the following:
• Display the 10 most common numbers, ordered by frequency
• Display the 10 least common numbers, ordered by frequency
• Display the 10 most overdue numbers (numbers that haven’t been drawn in a long
time), ordered from most overdue to least overdue
• Display the frequency of each number 1–69, and the frequency of each Powerball
number 1–26
14. Gas Prices
In the student sample program files for this chapter, you will find a text file named
GasPrices.txt. The file contains the weekly average prices for a gallon of gas in the
United States, beginning on April 5th, 1993, and ending on August 26th, 2013. Figure 8-7
shows an example of the first few lines of the file’s contents:

Figure 8-7 the GasPrices.txt file

460 Chapter 8 More about Strings

Each line in the file contains the average price for a gallon of gas on a specific date. Each line
is formatted in the following way:

MM-DD-YYYY:Price

MM is the two-digit month, DD is the two-digit day, and YYYY is the four-digit year. Price is
the average price per gallon of gas on the specified date.
For this assignment, you are to write one or more programs that read the contents of the file
and perform the following calculations:
Average Price Per Year: Calculate the average price of gas per year, for each year in the file.
(The file’s data starts in April of 1993, and it ends in August 2013. Use the data that is pres-
ent for the years 1993 and 2013.)
Average Price Per Month: Calculate the average price for each month in the file.
Highest and Lowest Prices Per Year: For each year in the file, determine the date and amount
for the lowest price, and the highest price.
List of Prices, Lowest to Highest: Generate a text file that lists the dates and prices, sorted
from the lowest price to the highest.
List of Prices, Highest to lowest: Generate a text file that lists the dates and prices, sorted
from the highest price to the lowest.
You can write one program to perform all of these calculations, or you can write different
programs, one for each calculation.
15. Caesar Cipher
A “Caesar Cipher” is a simple way of encrypting a message by replacing each letter with a
letter a certain number of spaces up the alphabet. For example, if shifting the message by
13 an A would become an N, while an S would wrap around to the start of the alphabet to
become an F.
Write a program that asks the user for a message (a string) and a shift amount (an integer).
The values should be passed to a function that accepts a string and an integer as arguments,
and returns a string representing the original string encrypted by shifting the letters by the
integer. For example, a string of “BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH” and an integer of 13
should result in a string of “ORJNER GUR VQRF BS ZNEPU”.