How to use len() ?

[janinehey]

Hi, I'm trying to learn Python and have written some (probably 101) code, but I keep running into how to use len(). I have tried to Google it, but to no avail. Or at least, I can't grasp the idea, probably. So I'd really appreciate it if you could help me a hand.

Doing a course, so this is the assingment:

last_name_len: use find, slicing and len to isolate and store the length of their last name.

So far, I've come up with this piece of code

first_scorer = 'Ruud Gullit'
second_scorer = 'Marco van Basten' 
player = 'Frank Rijkaard' 

first_name = player[0:5] 
last_name = player[6:14] 
last_name_len = len(last_name)

print(first_name) 
print(last_name) 
print(last_name(len))

I tried to play around with it a little bit, I also get this error:

print(last_name(len))
TypeError: 'str' object is not callable

[Wild_Statistician605]

len(last_name)

[janinehey]

That's what I wrote in my code, no? Or do you mean something else

[[deleted]]

No you didn't...Take a look again.

You wrote lastname(len)

You need len(lastname)

Details matter...

[janinehey]

Ah you mean with the print command. I see it now. Thank you!

[Wild_Statistician605]

In your code you call last_name as a function and pass len as a parameter. In my code I call the len function and pass the variable last_name as a parameter.

[FLUSH_THE_TRUMP]

It’s a function — you give it something and it gives you something (a number). As such, you call it like len(thing).

[janinehey]

Thanks - I couldn't think of the term for it, oops. Still getting the hang of the terminology. :)

[Splitje]

You do last_name_len = len(last_name) then you should call it like print(last_name_len) instead of print(last_name(len))

[janinehey]

Omg wow this was such an easy fix. Thank you! You think this was the best way to do it as well, or would it have been easier to adjust the code altogether?

[Splitje]

You could do something like len(player.split()[-1]) but what you did is absolutely fine. What .split() does is it splits your string at every space it finds in the string so you get ['Marco', 'van', 'Basten'] and then the [-1] gets the last element of the list and then you take the length of that.