Mirroring a string of text using Python

Question

I am trying to write code to mirror a string within python. I assumed it was similar to mirroring an image or a sound however I cannot get past the loop. The input and output should both be a string.

def mirror(text):
  mirrorPoint=(len(text)/2)
  for i in range(0,mirrorPoint):
    text=text[mirrorPoint]
  return text+''.join(string(text))
print mirror('text')

I am not sure if this is right, but it gets caught on the second to last line of text.

If the input was 'abcd' the output should yield 'abba'.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly:

def mirror(text):
    mirror_point = int(len(text)/2)
    res = text[:mirror_point] # Get Slice of Text
    return res + res[::-1] # Add Slice Plus Reverse of the Slice
print mirror( 'abcd')

In you code:

mirrorPoint = (len(text)/2) will be a float so when passed to range it will not work as range needs an integer.

''.join(string(text)) , you would use str(text) if you were going to cast to a str but text is already a string so there is no need to cast.

text = text[mirrorPoint] keeps changing the value of text so you will get an index error, if you wanted to store a string variable outside the loop like res = "", you could then use res += text[i] where text[i] is each character you want to add

Using your own code:

def mirror(text):
    res = ""
    mirrorPoint = int(len(text)/2)
    for i in range(mirrorPoint):
        res += text[i]
    return text[:mirrorPoint] + res[::-1]

To handle uneven length strings we need to add 1 to mirror_point if the string is an odd length:

def mirror(text):
    mirror_point = int(len(text) / 2)
    if mirror_point % 2 == 0:
        res = text[:mirror_point]
    else:
        res = text[:mirror_point+1]
    return res + res[::-1]