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Python Introducing Lists Using Lists Continental

Posted by Ben Bassler
Ben Bassler
1,806 Points

Checking if a list has strings that begin with a certain letter.

"I'd like you to now only print continents that begin with the letter "A"." That is the task, but how do I check this?

continents.py 
continents = [
    'Asia',
    'South America',
    'North America',
    'Africa',
    'Europe',
    'Antarctica',
    'Australia',
]
# Your code here
for i in continents:
    print("* " + i)

3 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,198 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,198 Points

You can access individual characters in a string by indexing, using brackets similar to working with a list. For example, since index numbers start at 0, the first character of "mystring" would be "mystring[0]".

You could then compare that to the letter "A" in a conditional expression as part of an "if" statement.

Ben Bassler
Ben Bassler
1,806 Points

How would the code look like? I don't think I quite understand it yet...

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,198 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,198 Points

In this case, in between the "for" and the "print", you might have something like this:

  if i[0] == "A":
Ben Bassler
Ben Bassler
1,806 Points
Ben Bassler
Ben Bassler
1,806 Points

Alright, I got it now! Thank you for your help.

Oleksandr Krasnovskyy
Oleksandr Krasnovskyy
3,312 Points
Oleksandr Krasnovskyy
Oleksandr Krasnovskyy
3,312 Points

Whats the final code? Doesnt work for me

for continent in continents: if i[0] == "A": print("* " + continent)

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,198 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,198 Points

His loop variable was "i", but yours is "continent". So you'll need to substitute the name in the "if" line to adapt it to your code.