Python Exercises - Reverse a String

As an exercise to gain more experience with Python, I wrote a function to reverse a string. Playing with ideone.com's online Python IDE was also a bonus. You can run the following code here. This is probably not the best way to solve this problem, but it works.

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# implement a function that reverses a string
def reverse_string(in_string):
        # reverse string using brute force
        print " input is %s" % in_string
        length = len(in_string)
        out_string = ""
        for position in range(length, 0, -1):
                out_string += in_string[position-1]
        print "output is %s" % out_string
        return out_string
 
a = reverse_string("1234")
print a

While I am aware that Python already provides a reversed() function as well as a .reverse() method for List objects, I wanted to gain the experience of having written a function to perform the task myself, so I wrote one. In retrospect, reading this sooner might have helped me write this code in far fewer lines.