How to Rotate String in Python

In Python, the easiest way to rotate characters in a string is with slicing. You can rotate a string backwards or forwards with slicing.

string = "hello"

string_rotated_backwards = string[1:] + string[:1]
string_rotated_forward = string[-1:] + string[:-1]

print(string_rotated_backwards)
print(string_rotated_forward)

#Output:
elloh
ohell

In Python, strings are one of the most used data structures. When working with strings, it is useful to be able to change the order of characters of a string in an easy way.

With Python, we can easily rotate the characters in a string both to the right or the left.

To rotate a string backwards, we slice the string from the second character to the end, and then add a slice with only the first character to the end of first slice.

To rotate a string forward, we slice the string from the second to last character to the beginning, and then add a slice with only the last character to the beginning of first slice.

Below is an example of how to rotate a string both backwards and forward with string slicing using Python.

string = "hello"

string_rotated_backwards = string[1:] + string[:1]
string_rotated_forward = string[-1:] + string[:-1]

print(string_rotated_backwards)
print(string_rotated_forward)

#Output:
elloh
ohell

If you need to rotate a string multiple times, we can define a function which rotates the string a specified number of characters.

Below is a function which will rotate the characters in a string using slicing multiple times to the left or right depending on the argument values passed.

def rotateString(string,direction,n):
    if direction == "backwards":
        new_string = string[n:] + string[:n]
    else: 
        new_string = string[-n:] + string[:-n]
    return new_string

print(rotateString("progrmaming","backwards",2))
print(rotateString("progrmaming","forwards",3))

#Output:
ogrmamingpr
ingprogrmam

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to learn how to rotate strings in Python.