I want to find the first, second, and last words in a string

Given a string, I want to write 3 separate functions:

• first_word is to print the first word of the string
• second_word is to print the second word of the string
• last_word is to print the last word of the string

If the string has 2 words in total, the output from function 2 should be equal to function 3.

Example:

sentence = "once upon a time there was a programmer"

print(first_word(sentence)) # once

print(second_word(sentence)) # upon

print(last_word(sentence)) # programmer

What I tried so far:

def first_word(str):
       space = str.find(' ')
       return(str[0:space])

sentence = "once upon a time there was a programmer"
print(first_word(sentence))

Output: once

What I’m stuck on: I’m not sure how to do the second and third functions. Is there a way to have function 1 incorporated into function 2 and 3? Then the only difference between the 3 functions is that they’re different iterations of function 1. Please explain your thought process as well.

Answer

You can use string split method to get words from your sentence https://www.w3schools.com/python/ref_string_split.asp

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# coding=utf-8

sentence = 'once upon a time there was a programmer'


def get_words(input):
    return input.split(" ")


def first_word(data):
    words = get_words(data)
    if len(words) != 0:
        print(f"First word = {words[0]}")


def second_word(data):
    words = get_words(data)
    if len(words) > 1:
        print(f"Second word = {words[1]}")
    else:
        print("Second word = Null")


def last_word(data):
    words = get_words(data)
    if len(words) != 0:
        print(f"Last word = {words[-1]}")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    first_word(sentence)
    second_word(sentence)
    last_word(sentence)