Python String Type error

Question

word = input("Please enter two words");

word1 = word

number = len(word);

space = '/'  

for i in range(number):

    if(word1[i] == " "):

        word1[i] = space;

print(word1)

I am getting the following error: "TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment"
It doesn't like that I am replacing word1[i] = space;
I don't understand why because they are both strings.

Answer 1

Just as the error message says, you can't modify a string.

One approach, which will let you keep most of the code you've written, is to convert your string to a list of characters:

word = list(word)

Then join it back into a sting when you're done:

word = "".join(word)

Another approach is to build up a new string and conditionally choose which character is concatenated to it:

result = ""
for c in word:
    if c = " ":
        result += space    # should be named slash
    else:
        result += c

But a far better solution is to replace all that code with a single line:

word = word.replace(" ", "/")

Python String Type error

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