How to Retrieve the Last 3 Letters of a String in Python

Discover how to easily extract the last three characters from a string using index slicing in Python. Perfect for beginners!
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How to Retrieve the Last 3 Letters of a String in Python

If you’re working with strings in Python, you may find yourself needing to extract specific portions of these strings. One common task is retrieving the last few characters of a string. In this guide, we will explore how to retrieve the last three letters of a string using Python’s string indexing.

Understanding String Indexing

Before we dive into the solution, let’s briefly discuss how string indexing works in Python:

String Index: In Python, each character in a string has an index number. These index numbers start from 0 for the first character and go up to n-1, where n is the length of the string.

Negative Indexing: Python also allows negative indexing where -1 refers to the last character, -2 to the second last, and so on.

For example, given the string "Finley":

F is at index 0

i is at index 1

y is at index 5

Using negative indexes, y can be accessed with -1, l with -2, and n with -3.

The Challenge: Extracting Last 3 Letters

Here’s a simple problem: you want to retrieve the last three letters from the string "Finley". Using string indexing would be an effective approach!

The Solution

To extract the last three characters from the string, you can use a technique called slicing. Here’s how you can do it:

Define your string: First, you need to have a string in which you want to extract characters. In our example, we will use the string streetName = "Finley".

Use slicing: You can slice the string to get the last three characters using negative indexing.

Here’s the code that accomplishes this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Code

streetName[-3:]: This tells Python to start at the third-last character and go to the end of the string. The syntax is string[start:end] where:

start is the index from which to begin the slicing,

end is the index to stop slicing (not included).

The colon : after -3 implies that we want to include everything from index -3 to the end of the string.

Output

When you run the above code, the output will be:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This is the expected result, showing that you have successfully retrieved the last three letters of the string.

Conclusion

Extracting the last three letters from a string in Python is straightforward when you utilize string slicing with negative indexing. It’s a flexible and efficient way to work with strings, especially as your string data gets larger. Now you can incorporate this technique into your own Python programs to manipulate strings with ease!

Do you have any questions or need further explanations? Please feel free to ask in the comments below!