'in-place' string modifications in Python

Question

In Python, strings are immutable.

What is the standard idiom to walk through a string character-by-character and modify it?

The only methods I can think of a

Answer 1

If I ever need to do something like that I just convert it to a mutable list

For example... (though it would be easier to use sort (see second example) )

>>> s = "abcdfe"
>>> s = list(s)
>>> s[4] = "e"
>>> s[5] = "f"
>>> s = ''.join(s)
>>> print s
abcdef
>>>
# second example
>>> s.sort()
>>> s = ''.join(s)