Count the number of Special Characters in a string in Python

In this tutorial, you will learn how to count the number of special characters in a string in Python programming language.

In my previous article we have learned: How to check if a string contains a Special Character or Not in Python

Special characters are those characters that have a built-in meaning in the programming language. These can be either a single character or a set of characters. Through this example, you will be able to count the number of special characters present in a string.

Here are some examples:

Code$Speedy
String contains 1 Special Character/s.

Code Speedy
There are no Special Characters in this String.

To count the special characters we create a function count_special_character which will count the occurrence of special characters in a particular string. We create a variable special_char and initialize it to 0. This variable special_char is used as a counter, Whenever there is an occurrence of a special character this counter is incremented by one.

Python program to count the number of special characters in a String.

#Python program to count the number of 
#Special Characters in a string.

def count_special_character(string): 
  
    # Declaring variable for special characters 
    special_char= 0
   
    for i in range(0, len(string)):  
    # len(string) function to count the 
    # number of characters in given string.
      
        ch = string[i]
  
        #.isalpha() function checks whether character 
        #is alphabet or not.

        if (string[i].isalpha()):  
            continue
        
        #.isdigit() function checks whether character 
        #is a number or not.
        elif (string[i].isdigit()):
            continue
            
        else: 
            special_char += 1
            
            
    if special_char >= 1:    
        print("String contains {} Special Character/s ".format(special_char))  
    else:
        print("There are no Special Characters in this String.")
  
# Driver Code
if __name__ == '__main__' : 
    string = "Code%^&*$Speedy"
    count_special_character(string)

Output

String contains 5 Special Character/s.

First, we use For loop to iterate through the characters of the string. len(string) is used to count the number of characters which will then be used in the For loop as a parameter in the range function.
There are 2 built-in methods available in python:

1. isalpha(): This method is used to check if the input character is an alphabet or not.
2. isdigit(): This method is used to check if the input character is a digit or not.

If these methods are true for the character then continue statement is executed and if not true then the value of special_char is incremented by 1.

Finally, if the value of special_char is more than 1 then it is displayed as an output else message ” There are no special characters in this string ” is printed.

One response to “Count the number of Special Characters in a string in Python”

1. Menno Manheim says:

   August 23, 2020 at 2:10 pm

   “ch = string[i]” seems to be redundant.

   Reply