dictionaries and strings instancewe need to know the line on which the relevant information startshow data items are separatedand how many data items are on each line the algorithm for reading and processing the text often needs to be tailored to the file structure although the split function already considered is quite flexibleand works for most of the examples presented in this bookit might not always be the best tool python has number of other ways to process stringswhich couldin some casesmake the text processing easier and more efficient to introduce some of the basic operations on stringswe can use the following string variable as an examples 'berlin at pmsuch string is really just sequence of charactersand it behaves much like other sequence data types such as lists and tuples for instancewe can index string to extract individual characterss[ 'bs[ 'es[- 'mslices also work in the way we are used to and can be used to extract substrings of strings 'berlin at pms[ :from index to the end of the string ' at pms[ : index and (not !' [ :- ' at ps[ :- ' citerating over string also works as we would expects 'berlin at pmfor s_ in sprint(s_end='strings have method named find that searches the string for given substringand returns the index of its locationas followss find('berlin' find('pm' find('oslo'- where does 'berlinstartat index not found