How do I modify a single character in a string, in Python?

Question

How do I modify a single character in a string, in Python? Something like:

 a = "hello"
 a[2] = "m"

'str' object does not support item assignment.

Answer 1

Strings are immutable in Python. You can use a list of characters instead:

a = list("hello")

When you want to display the result use ''.join(a):

a[2] = 'm'
print ''.join(a)

Answer 2

In python, string are immutable. If you want to change a single character, you'll have to use slicing:

a = "hello"
a = a[:2] + "m" + a[3:]