Reverse String in Python

Welcome to the Reverse String in Python page! Here, you'll find the source code for this program as well as a description of how the program works.

Current Solution

import sys

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    print(sys.argv[1][::-1])

Reverse String in Python was written by:

• Jeremy Griffith

This article was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• rzuckerm

If you see anything you'd like to change or update, please consider contributing.

How to Implement the Solution

Let's start by looking at the complete algorithm to reverse a string in Python.

As we can see, we can write a script to reverse a string in about three lines of code. In the following sections, we'll take a look at a breakdown of each of these lines.

The Python sys Library

In the first line of code, we'll notice that we're importing the built-in sys library:

import sys

If you're unfamiliar with this library, basically it contains functions for interacting directly with the interpreter during runtime.

In our case, we're leveraging the library to access the command line. From the command line, we can get our string that we're going to reverse.

The Conditional

After we've imported our sys library, this script runs a bit of a sanity check:

if len(sys.argv) > 1:

If we recall from the previous section, we found out that sys gives us access to the command line. We can get the array of command line arguments using argv. According to Python documentation, argv is the list of command line arguments.

With that in mind, it's clear that we're just verifying its length. But, why aren't we just checking to see if the list is empty? That would probably be more efficient and more explicit. Well, as it turns out, the interpreter stores the script name as the first argument, so argv will always contain at least one element.

If we put all that information together, we'll notice that we only branch if the list of command line arguments contains more than one item. If it does, we know the user has passed us some string.

The Slice & Print

Our last line is a bit terse, but we can handle it:

print(sys.argv[1][::-1])

The first thing to note is the print function. We'll probably remember that from our Hello World experience, so no need to dig into that much deeper.

Inside the print function, we have quite a bit of syntax. First, we access our command line arguments again using sys.argv. However, this time we're trying to access one of the items using an index of one. Like many languages, Python list indices start from zero, so clearly we're trying to access our string for reversal.

After that, we'll notice another piece of interesting syntax: [::-1]. It looks sort of like list access, but it has colons and a negative value. As it turns out, that syntax is called a slice. Typically, slices are used to get a subset of an iterable. For instance, if I wanted the first four characters of a string, I could do the following:

myString = "Hello, World!"
print(myString[:4])  # Prints "Hell"

Okay, maybe that's not a family friendly example, but you get the idea.

Now, with a single colon, we can slice between any two indices. With a second colon, we can declare the step. For example, maybe we want every other character in a string:

myString = "Hello, World!"
print(myString[::2])  # Prints "Hlo ol!"

As an added wrinkle, we can step backwards through the string using a negative value. That's exactly how we reverse the string in our example.

So, let's put it all together. We get our string off the command line, take a slice of it backwards, and print the result. How cool is that?

How to Run the Solution

To run the Reverse a String in Python program, grab a copy of the Python file from GitHub. After that, get the latest version of Python. Now, all you have to do is run the following from the command line:

python reverse-string.py "Hello, World!"

Alternatively, you can always copy the source code into an online Python interpreter. Just make sure you pass some input to your script before you run it.