Reversing a string in Python

There are different ways to reverse a string in Python.

Using slicing

The usual way to reverse a string is to use slicing with a negative step:

>>> string = "hello world"
>>> string[::-1]
'dlrow olleh'

Breaking it down, string[:] means: "take the string from beginning to end", and string[::-1] means that the string should be taken one step at a time, adding -1 to the index after each step.

The final result is that the string gets reversed.

If you don't understand precisely what's going on, don't worry too much about it. Just put [::-1] after your string (or list, or tuple) to reverse it.

Using reversed

There is a built-in function named reversed that can give you an iterator over the string that runs in reverse. For example:

>>> string = "abc"
>>> for letter in reversed(string):
...     print(letter)
... 
c
b
a

However you cannot print this iterator directly, or you will see the reversed object:

>>> print(reversed("abc"))
<reversed object at 0x7f8222e12210>

Doing it manually

You can write your own function to reverse a string:

def reverse(string):
    result = ""
    index = len(string) - 1
    while index >= 0:
        result += string[index]
        index -= 1
    return result

print(reverse("hello"))

Running the code correctly prints olleh.

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