[Tutor] subclassing strings

[Eric Abrahamsen]

I'm playing around with subclassing the built-in string type, and  
realizing there's quite a bit I don't know about what's going on with  
the built-in types. When I create a string like so:

x = 'myvalue'

my understanding is that this is equivalent to:

x = str('myvalue')

and that this second form is more fundamental: the first is a  
shorthand for the second. What is 'str()' exactly? Is it a class name?  
If so, is the string value I pass in assigned to an attribute, the way  
I might create a "self.value =" statement in the __init__ function of  
a class I made myself? If so, does that interior attribute have a  
name? I've gone poking in the python lib, but haven't found anything  
enlightening.

I started out wanting to subclass str so I could add metadata to  
objects which would otherwise behave exactly like strings. But then I  
started wondering where the actual value of the string was stored,  
since I wasn't doing it myself, and whether I'd need to be careful of  
__repr__ and __str__ so as not to interfere with the basic string  
functioning of the object. As far as I can tell the object functions  
normally as a string without my doing anything – where does the string  
value 'go', and is there any way I might inadvertently step on it by  
overriding the wrong attribute or method?

Thanks for any insight,

Eric