String right

A Python string contains many characters. Often we want just the last several characters—the ending, rightmost part of the string.

Implementation notes

With a special method, we can get just the right part. But often using slice syntax directly is a better choice as it involves less code.

Required output

Consider the string "soft orange cat." The last 3 characters are "cat," and so the result of right() with an argument of 3 should be "cat."

         soft orange cat
RIGHT 3: cat

An example

Here we introduce a "right" method. Pay close attention to the return value of right(). It uses slice syntax with a negative start, and no end.

def right(value, count):
    # To get right part of string, use negative first index in slice.
    return value[-count:]

# Test the method.
source = "soft orange cat"
print(right(source, 3))
print(right(source, 1))

# We can avoid the "right" method entirely.
# ... We can also use len in the expression.
print(source[-2:])
print(source[len(source) - 2:])
cat
t
at
at

Some notes

If you are using strings in Python, learning the slice syntax is essential. We get "right" and "left" parts as slices.

Summary

There is no substring() or right() method in the Python language. With slice indexes (some of which can be omitted) we get string parts.