Why does this work if strings are immutable?

Question

For this code (python):

name = input("please enter your name")

introStatement = "please take a seat"

if name != "":

    introStatement = (name) + " please take a seat"

print(introStatement) 

I was expecting a TypeError, but the program was able to print a given name and the intro statement, I thought that strings were immutable so we wouldn't be able to do this.

Any explanation would be greatly appreciated, Thank you

Answer 1

This is happening because you aren't modifying the name or the original introStatement.

How Python works behind the hood is that it (sort of) creates a new "array" and copies "name" and " please have a seat" to the new array. Thus, the original string isn't amended, but rather, a new one is made.