Aren't Python strings immutable? Then why does a + " " + b work?

Solution 1:

First a pointed to the string "Dog". Then you changed the variable a to point at a new string "Dog eats treats". You didn't actually mutate the string "Dog". Strings are immutable, variables can point at whatever they want.

Solution 2:

The string objects themselves are immutable.

The variable, a, which points to the string, is mutable.

Consider:

a = "Foo"
# a now points to "Foo"
b = a
# b points to the same "Foo" that a points to
a = a + a
# a points to the new string "FooFoo", but b still points to the old "Foo"

print a
print b
# Outputs:

# FooFoo
# Foo

# Observe that b hasn't changed, even though a has.

Solution 3:

The variable a is pointing at the object "Dog". It's best to think of the variable in Python as a tag. You can move the tag to different objects which is what you did when you changed a = "dog" to a = "dog eats treats".

However, immutability refers to the object, not the tag.

If you tried a[1] = 'z' to make "dog" into "dzg", you would get the error:

TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment" 

because strings don't support item assignment, thus they are immutable.