2 What are Strings in Python

A string in almost any popular programming language is always in either "double quotes" or 'single quotes'. As far as the computer is concerned, these two different syntax are the same.

A string is a simple way of telling a computer that you want to store some data as is. In other words, when a string is output - the contents of the string will read exactly the same as you had typed it.

"This is a string."

The output is 'This is a string.' so the same. Remember that the surrounding quotes are usually interchangeable.

Now why do I say “usually”? Let’s look at another example:

'let's go'

This is invalid Python code as it raises a SyntaxError. To get around this, you can you a backslash (\) to tell Python to ignore the second single quote.

'let\'s go'

Python will carry on interpreting your code as a string until the final single quote as we expected. The output is "let's go" and we now have a string that has our desired contents. Have a go in your own Python shell by typing a string yourself.