String operators - introduction

String operators - introduction

It's time to return to these two arithmetic operators + and * 

We want to show you that they have a second function. They are able to do something more than just add and multiply

We've seen them in action where their arguments are numbers (floats or integers, it doesn't matter).

Now we're going to show you that they can handle strings, too, albeit in a very specific way. 

Concatenation

The + (plus) sign, when applied to two strings, becomes a concatenation operator:

string + string

It simply concatenates (glues) two strings into one. Of course, like its arithmetic sibling, it can be used more than once in one expression, and in such a context it behaves according to left-sided binding. 

In contrast to its arithmetic sibling, the concatenation operator is not commutative, i.e., "ab" + "ba" is not the same as "ba" + "ab"

Don't forget - if you want the + sign to be a concatenator, not an adder, you must ensure that both its arguments are strings.

You cannot mix types here. 

This simple program shows the + sign in its second use:

fnam = input("May I have your first name, please? ")
lnam = input("May I have your last name, please? ")
print("Thank you.")
print("\nYour name is " + fnam + " " + lnam + ".")

Note: using+ to concatenate strings lets you construct the output in a more precise way than with a pure print() function, even if enriched with the end= and sep= keyword arguments. 

Run the code and see if the output matches your predictions.