Python has several built-in data types. Sometimes, when writing Python code, you might need to convert one data type to another. For example, concatenate a string and integer, first, you’ll need to convert the integer into a string.

This article explains how to convert a Python integer to a string.

Python str() Function #

In Python, we can convert integers and other data types to strings using the built-in str() function.

The str() function returns a string version of a given object. It takes the following forms:

class str(object='')
class str(object=b'', encoding='utf-8', errors='strict')

• object – Object to be converted to a string.

The function accepts three arguments, but usually, when converting an integer to a string, you’ll pass only one argument (object) to the function.

Converting a Python Integer into String #

To convert the integer 23 to a string version, simply pass the number into the str() function:

str(23)
type(days)

'23'
<class 'str'>

The quotes around 23 indicate that the number is not an integer but is an object of string type. Also, the type() function shows that the object is a string.

Concatenating Strings and Integers #

Let’s try to concatenate strings and integers using the + operator and print the result:

number = 6
lang = "Python"
quote = "There are " + number + " relational operators in " + lang + "."
print(quote)

Python will throw a TypeError exception error because it cannot concatenate strings and integers:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "int") to str

To convert the integer to a string, pass the integer to the str() function:

number = 6
lang = "Python"
quote = "There are " + str(number) + " relational operators in " + lang + "."
print(quote)

Now when you run the code, it will be executed successfully:

There are 6 relational operators in Python.

There are also other ways to concatenate strings and numbers.

The built-in string class provides a format() method that formats a given string using an arbitrary set of positional and keyword arguments:

number = 6
lang = "Python"
quote = "There are {} relational operators in {}.".format(number, lang)
print(quote)

There are 6 relational operators in Python.

On Python 3.6 and later, you can use f-strings, which are literal strings prefixed with ‘f’ containing expressions inside braces:

number = 6
lang = "Python"
quote = f"There are {number} relational operators in {lang}."
print(quote)

There are 6 relational operators in Python.

Lastly, you can use the old %-formatting:

number = 6
lang = "Python"
quote = "There are %s relational operators in %s." % (number, lang)
print(quote)

There are 6 relational operators in Python.

Conclusion #

In Python, you can convert an integer to a string using the str() function.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment.