title: How efficient is Python substring extraction?
body: <p>I've got the entire contents of a text file (at least a few KB) in string <code>myStr</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Will the following code create a copy of the string (less the first character) in memory?</p>
  
  <p><code>myStr = myStr[1:]</code></p>
  
  <p>I'm hoping it just refers to a different location in the same internal buffer. If not, is there a more efficient way to do this?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
  <p>Note: I'm using Python 2.5.</p>