# String methods

TODO: ADD MORE

- strings (and other types) have built in instance methods - in this case, `"string".startswith("s")` which are called from the instance of the string itself [phone-number](../exercise-concepts/phone-number.md)
- this exercise uses `str.maketrans()` (a static method of `str` that returns a dictionary to create a _translation table_ as required by the `str.translate()` instance method. This method is unusual in that it takes either a single dictionary or two strings of equal length. The example solution for this exercise uses `str.maketrans()` with a two-string argument. [rna-transcription](../exercise-concepts/rna-transcription.md)
