String does not support item assignment

Question

TARGET= 'i love artifical intelegence'
c='gdfhug'
import random
c[2]=random.choice(TARGET)
print(c)

This code reports this error:

'str' object does not support item assignment

How can I resolve it?

Answer 1

Strings are immutable, so they can't be treated exactly like lists/arrays. Thus, when you try and assign a value to the index position 2, Python stops you.

TARGET= 'i love artifical intelegence'
my_str='gdfhug'
ls = [c for c in my_str]  // Convert to a list
ls[2] = random.choice(TARGET)  // Reassign a position in the list
print(''.join(ls))  // Convert list back to string and print

The [c for c in my_str] is a list comprehension that will convert the string to a list. You could also use list(my_str). Once you are dealing with the list ls, your subscription ls[2] will work as expected. ''.join() is a function on the empty string '' that will take each element of ls and join them together with the empty string. This has the effect of creating a string from the elements of the list, since the joining element is empty.

Answer 2

A string in Python is immutable, so you cannot edit the string like that as you'd do a list.

True, a string is enumerable like list is; but still does not mean that it is mutable.

What you should probably do is build a new string by enumerating over the string c.

new_string = ''

for i, letter in enumerate(c):
    if i == 2:
        new_string += random.choice(TARGET)
    else:
        new_string += letter

Answer 3

You could cast you str to a list

TARGET= 'i love artifical intelegence'
c='gdfhug'
c=list(c)
import random
c[2]=random.choice(TARGET)
print(''.join(c))

Result:

gdehug

Answer 4

The shortest method is to use enumerate with list comprehension:

import random
TARGET = 'i love artificial intelligence'
c = 'gdfhug'
c = "".join(random.choice(TARGET) if idx == 2 else s for idx, s in enumerate(c))
print(c)