The slicing syntax lets you remove a particular character or range of characters from a string based on the index values of those characters.
This guide discusses how to remove the first n
characters from a string in Python. It walks through an example of the slicing syntax so that you can learn how to use it in your own programs.

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Python: String Indexing
Strings are sequences of characters. Each character in a string is given a unique index number. This number lets you identify and work with a specific character or set of characters.
Index numbers begin with zero and increase incrementally by one for each character. Let’s take a look at a string:
P | i | e | s | ! |
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
The string contains four characters. The first character, “P”, has the index number 0. The last character, !
, has the index number 4.
You can use these numbers to retrieve individual characters or remove characters from a string.
Remove the First n Characters from a String in Python
Here, write a program that removes the first four characters from the receipts that are stored by a donut store. These characters represent the ID of a purchase but are no longer relevant due to a systems upgrade.
To start, define a list of receipts and a new list where you can store the new receipts:
receipts = [ "107 Strawberry donut $2.00", "297 Blueberry donut $2.10", "342 Raspberry donut $2.10" ] new_receipts = []
The three numbers at the start of the list is the purchase ID. There is also a space that follows the ID that you want to remove.
Use a “for” loop to iterate over each receipt in the list so you can remove the first four characters from each receipt:
for r in receipts: new_r = r[4:] new_receipts.append(new_r)
This code removes the first four characters from each receipt in the “receipts” list. A new string without these characters is assigned to the variable “new_r” with the matched characters removed. You do this because strings are immutable and you cannot modify an existing string.
Next, add the new receipt to the “new_receipts” list. Finally, print the “new_receipts” list to the console so you can see if the code has worked:
print(new_receipts)
Run the code and see what happens:
['Strawberry donut $2.00', 'Blueberry donut $2.10', 'Raspberry donut $2.10']
The code has successfully removed the first four characters from each of the original strings.
If you wanted to remove more or fewer characters, you would replace the number 4 with the number of characters you wanted to remove. To remove only the first two characters from the strings, you would use this code:
new_r = r[2:]
With this line of code, the program would return:
['7 Strawberry donut $2.00', '7 Blueberry donut $2.10', '2 Raspberry donut $2.10']
Conclusion
You can remove the first n
characters from a string using slicing syntax. This syntax lets you retrieve a particular part of a string based on a particular index value.
Now you have the knowledge you need to use slicing to remove characters from the start of a Python string like a professional coder!
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