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Python Program to find First Occurrence of a Character in a String

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In this article, we will show you, How to write a Python program to find first occurrence of a character in a string with practical example.

TIP: Please refer String article to understand everything about Strings.

python program to find first occurrence of a character in a string Example 1

This python program allows the user to enter a string, and a character.

# Python Program to check First Occurrence of a Character in a String

string = input("Please enter your own String : ")
char = input("Please enter your own Character : ")

flag = 0
for i in range(len(string)):
    if(string[i] == char):
        flag = 1
        break

if(flag == 0):
    print("Sorry! We haven't found the Search Character in this string ")
else:
    print("The first Occurrence of ", char, " is Found at Position " , i + 1)

OUTPUT

Python Program to find First Occurrence of a Character in a String 1

ANALYSIS

Here, we used For Loop to iterate each and every character in a String. Inside the For Loop, we used If statement to check whether any character in str1 string is equal to character ch or not. If true, then flag = 1, and Break statement will be executed.
string = hello world
ch = l
flag = 0

For Loop First Iteration: for i in range(11)
if(string[i] == char)
if(h == l) – Condition is false.

Second Iteration: for 1 in range(11)
if(e == l) – Condition is false.

Third Iteration: for 2 in range(11)
if(str[2] == ch) => if(l == l) – Condition is True.
Flag  = 1 and, break statement will exit from the loop

Next, we used the If Else Statement to check whether the flag value is equal to 0. Here, the condition is False so, print inside the else block will be executed.

Python Program to find first occurrence of a character in a string Example 2

This first occurrence of a character program is same as above. However, we just replaced the For Loop with While Loop.

# Python Program to check First Occurrence of a Character in a String

string = input("Please enter your own String : ")
char = input("Please enter your own Character : ")
i = 0
flag = 0

while(i < len(string)):
    if(string[i] == char):
        flag = 1
        break
    i = i + 1

if(flag == 0):
    print("Sorry! We haven't found the Search Character in this string ")
else:
    print("The first Occurrence of ", char, " is Found at Position " , i + 1)

OUTPUT

Python Program to find First Occurrence of a Character in a String 2

Python program to find first occurrence of a character in a string Example 3

This is same as first example, but this time we used Functions concept to separate the logic.

# Python Program to check First Occurrence of a Character in a String

def first_Occurrence(char, string):
    for i in range(len(string)):
        if(string[i] == char):
            return i
    return -1

str1 = input("Please enter your own String : ")
ch = input("Please enter your own Character : ")

flag =  first_Occurrence(ch, str1)
if(flag == -1):
    print("Sorry! We haven't found the Search Character in this string ")
else:
    print("The first Occurrence of ", ch, " is Found at Position " , flag + 1)

OUTPUT

Python Program to find First Occurrence of a Character in a String 3