‘str’ object does not support item assignment

The other answers are correct, but you can, of course, do something like:

>>> str1 = "mystring"
>>> list1 = list(str1)
>>> list1[5] = 'u'
>>> str1 = ''.join(list1)
>>> print(str1)
mystrung
>>> type(str1)
<type 'str'>

if you really want to.