How do I get a substring of a string in Python?

>>> x = "Hello World!"
>>> x[2:]
'llo World!'
>>> x[:2]
'He'
>>> x[:-2]
'Hello Worl'
>>> x[-2:]
'd!'
>>> x[2:-2]
'llo Worl'

Python calls this concept "slicing" and it works on more than just strings. Take a look here for a comprehensive introduction.

Just for completeness as nobody else has mentioned it. The third parameter to an array slice is a step. So reversing a string is as simple as:

some_string[::-1]

Or selecting alternate characters would be:

"H-e-l-l-o- -W-o-r-l-d"[::2] # outputs "Hello World"

The ability to step forwards and backwards through the string maintains consistency with being able to array slice from the start or end.

One example seems to be missing here: full (shallow) copy.

>>> x = "Hello World!"
>>> x
'Hello World!'
>>> x[:]
'Hello World!'
>>> x==x[:]
True
>>>

This is a common idiom for creating a copy of sequence types (not of interned strings), [:]. Shallow copies a list, see Python list slice syntax used for no obvious reason.

You've got it right there except for "end". It's called slice notation. Your example should read:

new_sub_string = myString[2:]

If you leave out the second parameter it is implicitly the end of the string.

If myString contains an account number that begins at offset 6 and has length 9, then you can extract the account number this way: acct = myString[6:][:9].

If the OP accepts that, they might want to try, in an experimental fashion,

myString[2:][:999999]

It works - no error is raised, and no default 'string padding' occurs.

Well, I got a situation where I needed to translate a PHP script to Python, and it had many usages of substr(string, beginning, LENGTH).
If I chose Python's string[beginning:end] I'd have to calculate a lot of end indexes, so the easier way was to use string[beginning:][:length], it saved me a lot of trouble.

str1='There you are'
>>> str1[:]
'There you are'

>>> str1[1:]
'here you are'

#To print alternate characters skipping one element in between

>>> str1[::2]
'Teeyuae'

#To print last element of last two elements
>>> str1[:-2:-1]
'e'

#Similarly
>>> str1[:-2:-1]
'e'


#Using slice datatype

>>> str1='There you are'
>>> s1=slice(2,6)
>>> str1[s1]
'ere '

text = "StackOverflow"
#using python slicing, you can get different subsets of the above string

#reverse of the string
text[::-1] # 'wolfrevOkcatS' 

#fist five characters
text[:5] # Stack'

#last five characters
text[-5:] # 'rflow'

#3rd character to the fifth character
text[2:5] # 'rflow'

#characters at even positions
text[1::2] # 'tcOefo'

a="Helloo"
print(a[:-1])

In the above code, [:-1] declares to print from the starting till the maximum limit-1.

OUTPUT :

>>> Hello

Note: Here a [:-1] is also the same as a [0:-1] and a [0:len(a)-1]

a="I Am Siva"
print(a[2:])

OUTPUT:

>>> Am Siva

In the above code a [2:] declares to print a from index 2 till the last element.

Remember that if you set the maximum limit to print a string, as (x) then it will print the string till (x-1) and also remember that the index of a list or string will always start from 0.

I have a simpler solution using for loop to find a given substring in a string. Let's say we have two string variables,

main_string = "lullaby"
match_string = "ll"

If you want to check whether the given match string exists in the main string, you can do this,

match_string_len = len(match_string)
for index,value in enumerate(main_string):
    sub_string = main_string[index:match_string_len+index]
    if sub_string == match_string:
       print("match string found in main string")