Operations with strings in python

Question

Currently I'm learning Python3, and I already have some experience with C. I need to shift string to get rid of two first bytes. Here's code in C:

char *a = "Hello World";
a += 2;
printf ("%s", a)

this program will output "llo World"

I was wondering if there is a way of doing such thing in Python efficiently, without copying the whole string.

Answer 1

The closest operation in 2.x would be creating a buffer from the string and then slicing that. Creating the buffer is an additional operation, but only needs to be performed once since the buffer can be reused.

>>> a = 'Hello world'
>>> b = buffer(a)
>>> print b[2:]
llo world
>>> print b[:5]
Hello

3.x doesn't have buffer, but you shouldn't be trying to emulate the C code in Python regardless. Figure out what you're actually trying to do, and then write the appropriate Pythonic code for it.