Python: Check whether a string is a Palindrome

What is a Palindrome?

A palindrome is a sequence of characters which reads the same backward or forward.

For example dad, mom, kayak, a santa at nasa, anna.
Not palindromes: mario, luigi, ice cream.

There is more than one way in python to check whether given string is palindrome or not. Let’s have a look.

Method #1

def is_palindrome():
    return my_str == my_str[::-1]

defiantly one of the shortest ways to do it.
[::-1] taking care of inverting the string and all is left is simply compare between the original to inverted string.

Method #2

The following way is slower than the first method

def is_palindrome():
    return my_str == ''.join(reversed(my_str))

Method #3

My least favorite but quite common (especially in other languages)

def is_palindrome():
    for i in xrange(0, len(my_str)/2):
        if my_str[i] != my_str[len(my_str)-i-1]:
            return False
    return True

How to handle case-sensitive palindrome?

You can use upper() when comparing the reversed and the original strings.