title: Write a data string to a NumPy character array?
body: <p>I want to write a data string to a NumPy array. Pseudocode:</p>
  
  <pre><code>d = numpy.zeros(10, dtype = numpy.character)
  d[1:6] = 'hello'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Example result:</p>
  
  <pre><code>d=
    array(['', 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '', '', '', ''],
          dtype='|S1')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can this be done most naturally and efficiently with NumPy?</p>
  
  <p>I don't want <code>for</code> loops, generators, or anything iterative. Can it be done with one command as with the pseudocode?</p>