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4. String Services

The modules described in this chapter provide a wide range of string manipulation operations. Here's an overview:

`string` |  | Common string operations.
`re` |  | Regular expression search and match operations with a Perl-style expression syntax.
`struct` |  | Interpret strings as packed binary data.
`difflib` |  | Helpers for computing differences between objects.
`fpformat` |  | General floating point formatting functions.
`StringIO` |  | Read and write strings as if they were files.
`cStringIO` |  | Faster version of `StringIO`, but not subclassable.
`codecs` |  | Encode and decode data and streams.
`unicodedata` |  | Access the Unicode Database.

Information on the methods of string objects can be found in section 2.2.6, ``String Methods.''