Convert Integer to String in Python

Python strings are one of the most used data types while doing data analysis for operations like pattern matching. In this article, we will use different ways to convert an integer to string in python.

Convert integer to string using str() function

The easiest way to convert an integer to string is to use the str() function. The str() function takes the integer as input and returns its string representation as follows.

myInt = 1117
myStr = str(myInt)
print("The integer myInt is:", myInt)
print("The string myStr is:", myStr)

Output:

The integer myInt is: 1117
The string myStr is: 1117

We can check the type of input variable and output variable to confirm if the integer has been  converted to a string or not. To do this, we will use the type() function. The type function takes a python object as input and returns the data type of the input object as follows.

myInt = 1117
myStr = str(myInt)
print("The data type of myInt is:", type(myInt))
print("The data type of myStr is:", type(myStr))

Output:

The data type of myInt is: <class 'int'>
The data type of myStr is: <class 'str'>

Convert integer to string using string formatting

String formatting is a method to insert a variable or another string to a predefined string. We can also use string formatting to convert an integer to string. We will use the “%s” operator as well as the format() method to convert an integer to string in this article.

The “%s” operator is used to format a value inside a string. It is generally used to avoid string concatenation. But, we can use this operator to convert an integer to a string. For this, first we will create an empty string and put a %s placeholder in the empty string. After that, we can specify the integer which has to be converted into string. During execution of the program, the python interpreter will convert the integer into string as seen in the following example.

myInt = 1117
myStr = "%s" % myInt
print("myInt is:",myInt)
print("The data type of myInt is:", type(myInt))
print("myStr is:",myStr)
print("The data type of myStr is:", type(myStr))

Output:

myInt is: 1117
The data type of myInt is: <class 'int'>
myStr is: 1117
The data type of myStr is: <class 'str'>

In place of the “%s” operator, we can also use format() method to perform the conversion. For this we can put a {} placeholder in an empty string. After that, we can invoke the format method on the empty string with the integer given as the input to the format() method. This will convert the integer into string as follows.

myInt = 1117
myStr = "{}".format(myInt)
print("myInt is:",myInt)
print("The data type of myInt is:", type(myInt))
print("myStr is:",myStr)
print("The data type of myStr is:", type(myStr))

Output:

myInt is: 1117
The data type of myInt is: <class 'int'>
myStr is: 1117
The data type of myStr is: <class 'str'>

Conversion using F-strings

F strings are used to embed a value or an expression into a string. We can also use f strings to convert an integer into a string. 

The syntax for using f strings is similar to that of format() method. The only difference is that we can put the variables directly into the placeholders. This makes the code more readable. To put an integer variable n into a string, we simply put n into the {} placeholder as follows.

f"This is a string containing {n}"

To convert an integer to string using f strings, we will declare an empty string with only a single placeholder for the integer. In this way, at runtime, the integer will be converted to string. This can be seen in the following example.

myInt = 1117
myStr = f"{myInt}"
print("myInt is:",myInt)
print("The data type of myInt is:", type(myInt))
print("myStr is:",myStr)
print("The data type of myStr is:", type(myStr))

Output:

myInt is: 1117
The data type of myInt is: <class 'int'>
myStr is: 1117
The data type of myStr is: <class 'str'>

Conclusion

In this article, we have seen different ways to convert an integer into a string in python. We have used in-built str() method, string formatting as well as f-strings. To read more about strings, you can read this article on python string split operation.We can also write the programs used in this article with exception handling using python try except to make the programs more robust and handle errors in a systematic way.