Strings

These methods are available on both regular and Unicode strings.
.capitalize()
Important: For regular strings, this method depends on the currently configured locale to decide what is 'lowercase' and what is 'uppercase'.
Returns a copy of the string with the first character capitalized, and the rest of the characters lowercased.
.center(width[, fillchar])
Returns a copy of the string, centered by padding it with the fill character on both sides until the given width is reached.
width
The desired width of the final string.
fillchar
Optional. The character to use as a fill character. This is a space character by default.
.count(sub[, start[, end]])
Returns the number of non-overlapping occurrences of the given substring in the given range.
sub
The substring to search for.
start
Optional. The starting point for the search. Interpreted as in slice notation. Defaults to the start of the string.
end
Optional. The end point for the search. Interpreted as in slice notation. Defaults to the end of the string.
.decode([encoding[, errors]])
Returns a unicode string containing a copy of the original string, decoded using the codec registered for the specified encoding.
Since Python 2.7: You can also specify the arguments to this method as keyword arguments, for clarity.
encoding
Optional. The encoding that the string is currently in. If not specified, the value from sys.getdefaultencoding is used.
errors
Optional. The error handling scheme to use. Can be any of the following values, or any other name that is registered through codecs.register_error.
strict
This is the default. Encoding errors raise a UnicodeError exception, or a subclass thereof.
ignore
When an error is encountered, ignore the character, and move on to the next one.
replace
When an error is encountered, replace the problematic character with U+FFFD, for the built-in Unicode codecs.
.encode([encoding[, errors]])
Returns a regular string containing a copy of the original string, encoded using the codec registered for the specified encoding.
Since Python 2.7: You can also specify the arguments to this method as keyword arguments, for clarity.
encoding
Optional. The encoding you wish to encode the string to. If not specified, the value from sys.getdefaultencoding is used.
errors
Optional. The error handling scheme to use. Can be any of the following values, or any other name that is registered through codecs.register_error.
strict
This is the default. Encoding errors raise a UnicodeError exception, or a subclass thereof.
ignore
When an error is encountered, ignore the character, and move on to the next one.
replace
When an error is encountered, replace the problematic character with U+FFFD, for the built-in Unicode codecs.
xmlcharrefreplace
When an error is encountered, replace the problematic character with the corresponding XML entity.
backslashreplace
When an error is encountered, replace the problematic character with the corresponding backslashed escape sequence.