string building

[John Salerno]

Out of curiosity, is there any kind of equivalent in Python to the 
StringBuilder class in C#? Here's a quick description from the .NET 
documentation:

"This class represents a string-like object whose value is a mutable 
sequence of characters. The value is said to be mutable because it can 
be modified once it has been created by appending, removing, replacing, 
or inserting characters."

It's used for dealing with large strings that otherwise would cause 
performance problems if used as regular string objects. I'm just 
wondering if Python has something like this, or if it is even really 
necessary. I know there is even some discussion on when exactly 
StringBuilder becomes useful over regular strings, but I imagine at some 
point it is good to use.