Sorting a string alphabetically is a common need in programming, and Python provides the built-in function sorted() to do so.

However, what if we want to sort a string alphabetically without using the sorted() function? In this tutorial, we will show you how to do just that.

Steps:

1. Convert the string into a list of characters.
2. Find the length of the list.
3. Use a nested loop to compare the characters and swap their positions if necessary.
4. Convert the sorted list back to a string.

Let’s go through each step in detail.

Step 1: Convert the string into a list of characters.

To sort a string without the sorted() function, we need to first convert the string into a list of characters using the list() function. For example:

string = "hello"
char_list = list(string)
print(char_list)

This will output:

Output:

['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o']

Step 2: Find the length of the list.

We need to find the length of the list to use in our nested loop. We can do this using the len() function:

length = len(char_list)

Step 3: Use a nested loop to compare the characters and swap their positions if necessary.

We will use a nested loop to compare each pair of adjacent characters in the list and swap their positions if the second character is before the first character alphabetically. Here’s the code:

for i in range(length):
    for j in range(i+1, length):
        if char_list[i] > char_list[j]:
            temp = char_list[i]
            char_list[i] = char_list[j]
            char_list[j] = temp

Step 4: Convert the sorted list back to a string.

Finally, we need to convert the sorted list back to a string using the join() function:

sorted_string = ''.join(char_list)
print(sorted_string)

This will output the sorted string:

Output:

ehllo

Here is the full code:

Conclusion:

In this tutorial, we learned how to sort a string alphabetically in Python without using the built-in sorted() function.

By converting the string into a list of characters, finding the length of the list, using a nested loop to compare and swap characters, and converting the sorted list back to a string, we were able to achieve our goal.