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smart data

Python data is smart

The more code you write, the more you will find that you need to do the
same kind of things to the data in your variables all the time. To prevent
you from having to create the same code over and over, programming
languages provide built-in functionality to help you avoid writing
unnecessary code. Python data is smart: it can do things.
Let’s look at an example.
Imagine you have a piece of text in a variable that you want to display in
uppercase (all CAPITAL letters):

msg = "Monster truck rally. 4pm. Monday."

You could write code that read through each character in the string and
printed out the matching uppercase letter. But if you’re programming in a
language like Python, you can do this:

The dot means
“call the method on" “upper()" is a string method.
the specified variable.

print(msg.upper())
Here’s what gets
displayed, the value of
MONSTER TRUCK RALLY. 4PM. MONDAY. the “msg" variable in
UPPERCASE.

But what does msg.upper() mean?
Well, msg is the string containing our piece of text. The .upper() that
follows it is called a string method. A method is just an instruction for the
string. When you call msg.upper(), you are telling the string to give
you an UPPERCASE version of its data.
But is there a string method that can help you search
for a substring within a string object?

54 Chapter 2