message = "0123456789abcdef10-11-12"

# length of the string

length = len(message)

print "Length of string: %d" %(length)

# Finding index of characters within the string

index = message.index("a")

print "Index of letter a: %d" % index

index = message.index('b')

print "Index of letter b: %d" % index

# counting number of occurances of a letter in a string

repcount = message.count('-')

print "Number of times \"-\" occurred: %d" % repcount

print "**substrings**"

# printing a substring [start:end] start index is included, end is excluded

print message[5]

print message[7]

print message[5:7]

print message[5:7:1]

print message[5:1000]

# printing a substring in 'steps'

print ""

print "**substrings with steps**"

start = 3

end = 12

step = 2

print message[3]

print message[12]

print message[3:12:2]

print message[start:end:step]

print "**negative indices**"

# negative index in the string means index with respect to the end

print message[-1] # start at -1

# reversing the string

print message[12:0:-1] # going from 12 to 0 in reverse direction

print message[::-1] # I guess the default start position is length of string and default end is -1

#let's put this theory to test

print message[6::-1] # should start from 6th index (6) and start printing in reverse from there to the first character

print message[:6:-1] # should start from the end (2) and keep printing up to 7

# changing the case of string

duplicate = message.upper()

print duplicate

print duplicate.lower()

greeting = "Hello World!"

print greeting.startswith("Hell")

print greeting.startswith("hELL")

print greeting.endswith("World!")

# splitting the string

split_greeting_list = greeting.split(" ")

print split_greeting_list

print "%s" %split_greeting_list

print split_greeting_list[0]