These are just some impromptu python examples of strings and lists..
print 'hello world'
x='hello world'
print x
x[0]
x[5]
len(x)
x[10]
x += '!'
print x
x[11]
x[-1]
x[-6]
x[2:7]
y=x.split()
y
y[1]
range(10)
range(2,10)
range(2,10,3)
#see http://matplotlib.org/gallery.html
plot([x**2 for x in range(10)],'o')
plot([x for x in range(10)])
legend(['x**2','x'],loc='upper left');