through the whole string if an integer value is given for startthe search starts at index start if an integer value is given for endthe search ends before index end in other words if start and end appearthen the search is through the slice [start end]but the index returned is still counted from the beginning of for examplecheck that the following make sense the comment line is just there to help you count 'mississippis find(' ' find('si' find('sa'- find('si' predict and try each line in the shell line 'hellothere!line find(' 'line find('he'line find(' ' line find('he' we will consider more string methods laterbut we can already do useful things with the ones introduced inside the shellyou can look up documentation on any of the methods listed with the dir function here is place that you want to refer to the method itselfnot invoke the methodso note that you get help for find not for find(assuming you defined the string in the shell earliertry in the shell help( findthe python documentation uses square brackets to indicate optional elements which get default value if you leave them out this shortens the syntax descriptions if you want method documentation when you do not have variable of the type createdyou can also use the type name try in the shelldir(strhelp(str capitalizein the help documentation for function with one or more parametersyou may see what looks like final parameter ignore it it documents technical restriction on parameters it is not actually parameter indexing and slicing works on any kind of python sequenceso you can index or slice lists also readthis shell sessionvals [ vals[ vals[- vals[ : [ unlike stringslists are mutableas you will see in appending to list (page indices and slices can also be used in assignment statements to change listsbut in this tutorial we not need list indexingand we will not discuss this subject further stringspart iii