There are many built-in string methods in Python. We will cover a few of them here, and all of them in a future article.

A method saves the programmer from having to program the same code over and over again. Instead of typing a bunch of code to say, count the number of a's in a string, all the programmer has to do is call the appropriate method. In the following example, we are going to find out how many times each vowel appears in a string. Type the following into your python shell command prompt:

book='It was a dark and stormy night, the wind blowing through the trees, and somewhere, out there in the far off teinkling of city lights, Britney Spears was busy being a bad mother...'

book.count('a')

book.count('e')

book.count('i')

book.count('o')

book.count('u')

book.count('y')

The method will count each of the vowels and return a result, like the one below:

>>> book.count('a')

10

>>> book.count('e')

15

>>> book.count('i')

10

>>> book.count('o')

8

>>> book.count('u')

3

>>> book.count('y')

4

We can also count words within the document, like so:

>>> book.count('the')

5

>>> book.count('and')

2

>>> book.count('was')

2