How to Check Whether a String Contains Substring in Python

It is quite often that we need to check whether the given string contains a specific substring. We will list some methods here, and then compare the running time performance to select the most efficient method.

We will take the string - “It is a given string” as the given string and given is the substring to be checked.

in Operator

in operator is the membership checking operator. x in y is evaluated to be True if x is a member of y, or in other words, y contains x.

It returns True if the string y contains the substring x.

>>> `given` in `It is a given string`
True
>>> `gaven` in `It is a given string`
False

in Operator Performance

import timeit

def in_method(given, sub):
    return sub in given

print(min(timeit.repeat(lambda: in_method('It is a given string', 'given')))

0.2888628

str.find() method

find is a built-in method of string - str.find(sub).

It returns the lowest index in str where substring sub is found, otherwise returns -1 if sub is not found.

>>> givenStr = 'It is a given string'
>>> givenStr.find('given')
8
>>> givenStr.find('gaven')
-1

str.find() Method Performance

import timeit

def find_method(given, sub):
    return given.find(sub)

print(min(timeit.repeat(lambda: find_method('It is a given string', 'given'))))

0.42845349999999993

str.index() Method

str.index(sub) is a string built-in method that returns the lowest index in str where sub is found. It will raise ValueError when the substring sub is not found.

>>> givenStr = 'It is a given string'
>>> givenStr.index('given')
8
>>> givenStr.index('gaven')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#7>", line 1, in <module>
    givenStr.index('gaven')
ValueError: substring not found

str.index() Method Performance

import timeit

def find_method(given, sub):
    return given.find(sub)

print(min(timeit.repeat(lambda: find_method('It is a given string', 'given'))))

0.457951

Substring checking solution Conclusion

1. in operator is the one you should use to check whether a substring exists in the given string because it is the fastest
2. str.find() and str.index() could also be used but not the optimal because of the poor performance