Concatenation with +
Concatenation means joining pieces of text together. Use the + operator to combine string literals and variables:
name = "Marina"
print("Hello " + name + ", nice to meet you.")String literals must be inside quotes. Variable names are not inside quotes—otherwise you would print the letters of the name rather than its value.
Worked examples
Build a sentence using multiple variables:
direction = "north"
country = "Wales"
print("Have you been to the " + direction + " of " + country + "?")Mind the spaces! If you forget spaces in your strings, the result can look squashed:
day = "Saturday"
print("My birthday is on a" + day + "this year.") # missing spacesPrinting with commas
When mixing numbers with strings, prefer commas in print(). Commas automatically insert spaces and handle non-string values for you:
day = "Saturday"
print("My birthday is on a", day, "this year.")
cookies = 4
print("Munch! There's only", cookies, "cookies left.")Practice tasks
Task 1 – Pizza toppings
Create two variables, topping1 and topping2, then print a sentence using both.
topping1 = "ham"
topping2 = "mushroom"
print("My favourite pizza is " + topping1 + " and " + topping2 + ".")Task 2 – Stars
Create a numeric variable stars and print a sentence with it using commas.
stars = 827392012
print("I think there are", stars, "stars in the sky!")Task 3 – Age & month
Create a numeric variable age and a string variable month. Print one sentence using both.
age = 14
month = "August"
print("I am", age, "and I was born in", month + ".")