=======

Strings

=======

Strings were briefly introduced previously in the introduction document. In this

section strings will be presented in greater detail. All the standard operations 

that can be performed on sequences such as indexing, slicing, multiplication, length

minimum and maximum can be performed on string variables as well. One thing to

be noted is that strings are immutable, which means that string variables are

unchangeable. Hence, all item and slice assignments on strings are illegal.

Let us look at a few example.

::

  >>> name = 'PythonFreak'

  >>> print name[3]

  h

  >>> print name[-1]

  k

  >>> print name[6:]

  Freak

  >>> name[6:0] = 'Maniac'

  Traceback (most recent call last):

    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>

  TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

This is quite expected, since string objects are immutable as already mentioned.

The error message is clear in mentioning that 'str' object does not support item

assignment.

String Formatting

=================