Truncate String in Python with String Slicing

To truncate a string variable in Python, you can use string slicing and create a slice depending on your use case.

Below is a simple example of how to truncate a string with slicing in Python

string_variable = "This is a string of words"

truncated_string_to_10_chars = string_variable[:10] 

print(truncated_string_to_10_chars)

#Output:
This is a 

When working with string variables in Python, the ability to easily be able to change and manipulate the values of our strings can be useful.

One such manipulation is to be able to truncate a string.

To truncate a string in Python, you can use slicing. Slicing works for different data types in Python (strings, lists, tuples, etc.) and you can use slicing to end a string at a desired length.

To create a slice and truncate a string, use the following syntax which will create a new string that returns the string characters from the beginning to the stop – 1 position.

truncated_string string_variable[:stop] #returns string characters from the beginning to stop - 1 position

Below is a simple example of how you can truncate a string to the first 10 characters in Python.

string_variable = "This is a string of words"

truncated_string_to_10_chars = string_variable[:10] 

print(truncated_string_to_10_chars)

#Output:
This is a 

How to Use String Slicing in Python

Slicing is very powerful and allows you to do more than just truncate a string from the end. You can also get substrings of any length and starting position with slicing.

In general, here is how to use string slicing in your Python code.

string_variable[start:stop] #returns string characters from start position to stop - 1 position

string_variable[start:] #returns string characters from start position to the end

string_variable[:stop] #returns string characters from the beginning to stop - 1 position

string_variable[:] #returns the entire string variable

Below are some examples showing these operations in Python.

string_var = "1234567890"

print(string_var[3:6])
print(string_var[3:])
print(string_var[:5])
print(string_var[:])

#Output:
456
4567890
12345
1234567890

There is also an optional step parameter which allows you to skip over certain elements.

string_variable[start:stop:step] #returns string characters from start position to stop - 1 position with step

With the step parameter, you could create a string which gets only the even or odd characters from your string.

string_var = "1234567890"

print(string_var[0:6:2])

#Output:
135

You can also use a negative step to reverse the returned string.

Below shows how you can reverse a string with slicing.

string_var = "1234567890"

print(string_var[::-1])

#Output:
0987654321

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to learn how to use slicing to truncate strings in Python.