CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythoncomputer-science
newbieProgrammer
newbieProgrammer

Reputation: 305

How to compare substrings of 2 different strings?

I'm trying to compare 2 last names and see which comes first in alphabetical order

How would I extract the second word in any string with [firstword: secondword] format?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 85

Answers (5)

funnydman
funnydman

Reputation: 11326

The most appropriate way to do this is to use split() function:

Return a list of the words in the string, using sep as the delimiter string.

If sep is not specified or is None, a different splitting algorithm is applied: runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator, and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace.

For instance:

>>> name = "Grace Hopper"
>>> name = name.split()
>>> name
>>> ["Grace", "Hopper"]

If you want to compare by alphabetical order several strings, just use one of the comparison operators:

>>> name1 = "Stan"
>>> name2 = "Viktor"
>>> name1 > name2
>>> False

You're getting this result because of ord("S") < ord("V"), ord() built-in function returns an integer representing the Unicode code point of that character.

Upvotes: 0

zvone
zvone

Reputation: 19332

To extract the last name, you can use split to split the name. It will, by default, split on whitespace:

fullname = 'Grace Hopper'
first_name, last_name = fullname.split()

Then, to compare alphabetically, simply compare the lastnames:

if last_name_1 < last_name_2:
    ...

Or, use sorted to sort all names in a list of names:

fullnames = 'Grace Hopper', 'Katherine Johnson'

sorted_fullnames = sorted(fullnames, key=lambda fullname: fullname.split()[1])

Upvotes: 1

Albin Paul
Albin Paul

Reputation: 3419

Use the .split function to split string into words.

In [1]: a="Grace Hopper"

In [2]: b="Katherine Johnson"

In [3]: a.split()
Out[3]: ['Grace', 'Hopper']

In [4]: b.split()
Out[4]: ['Katherine', 'Johnson']

In [6]: a.split()[1]
Out[6]: 'Hopper'

In [8]: b.split()[1]
Out[8]: 'Johnson'

In [9]: a.split()[1] < b.split()[1]
Out[9]: True

Upvotes: 0

user10445346
user10445346

Reputation:

It seems you want to get the last names from the full names. If a person "1" has name "ABC DEF"; Another person "2" has name "PQR STU";

You can tokenize the string by using split() command.

person1 = "ABC DEF"
person2 = "PQR STU"
name1   = person1.split(" ")
name2   = person2.split(" ")

Now the results will be,

print(name1)
>>> ['ABC', 'DEF']
print(name2)
>>> ['PQR', 'STU']

Upvotes: 1

iz_
iz_

Reputation: 16573

Try this:

s = 'Grace Hopper Katherine Johnson'

result = min(s.split()[1::2])
print(result)

Output:

Hopper

Note that it's case sensitive (A < a). For a case insensitive version:

result = min(s.split()[1::2], key=str.lower)

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions