I don't quite get this "string".find()

[Steven Bethard]

Caleb Hattingh <caleb1 <at> telkomsa.net> writes:
> 
> I don't know why the function was set up this way.  However, an empty  
> string can be found in an infinite number of places within any other  
> string.

Infinite might be an exaggeration.  Since there are only a finite number of
indices into a string (len(s) + 1), there are only a finite number of places an
empty sting may be found in any given string:

>>> s = 'abc'
>>> s.find('')
0
>>> s.find('', 1)
1
>>> s.find('', 2)
2
>>> s.find('', 3)
3
>>> s.find('', 4)
-1

You can't, say, find the empty string somewhere between indices 1 and 2.


> Also, if you want to check whether a string is empty, I do
> 
> >>> "test" == ""
> False

An empty string evaluates to False in a boolean context, so you probably don't
usually want to actually test like this.  A couple of options:

>>> s = ''
>>> bool(s)
False

>>> s = ''
>>> if s:
... 	print 'not empty'
... else:
... 	print 'empty'
... 	
empty

My suspicion is that any time you actually test against an empty string, you're
probably doing this in the context of an if statement or a while loop, so you
can simply use the string directly instead of testing anything.

Steve