Python collections UserString

The UserString class defined in the collections module is used when we want to create custom strings.  The class is a subclass of the builtin str type meaning that  it inherits the functionality of standard strings  including  methods and properties. We use this class as a base class when we want to create our own string-like objects which can have extra or extended features.

It is possible to instantiate UserString objects directly, however, the instances will behave just like regular strings.

#import the class from the collections module
from collections import UserString

S = UserString('Pynerds')

#use string methods
print(S.upper())
print(S.lower())

#string operations
print(S + "Python")

Create custom strings using UserString class

We can create custom strings by subclassing the UserString class and defining the relevant methods. The following example defines the MyString class, which adds a custom method 'capitalize_words' to the string objects

from collections import UserString

class MyString(UserString): 
    def capitalize_words(self):
        return ' '.join([word.capitalize() for word in self.data.split(' ')])

S = MyString('this is a test string')
print(S.capitalize_words())