# Strings

These methods are available on both regular and Unicode strings.

^ .capitalize()

	! For regular strings, this method depends on the currently 
	  configured locale to decide what is 'lowercase' and what is
	  'uppercase'.

	Returns a copy of the string with the first character
	capitalized, and the rest of the characters lowercased.
	
^ .center(`width`[, `fillchar`])

	Returns a copy of the string, centered by padding it with the
	fill character on both sides until the given width is reached.
	
	width::
		The desired width of the final string.
		
	fillchar::
		**Optional.** The character to use as a fill character.
		This is a space character by default.
		
^ .count(`sub`[, `start`[, `end`]])

	Returns the number of non-overlapping occurrences of the given
	substring in the given range.
	
	sub::
		The substring to search for.
		
	start::
		**Optional.** The starting point for the search. 
		Interpreted as in slice notation. Defaults to the start
		of the string.
		
	end::
		**Optional.** The end point for the search. Interpreted
		as in slice notation. Defaults to the end of the string.

^ .decode([`encoding`[, `errors`]])

	Returns a `unicode` string containing a copy of the original
	string, decoded using the codec registered for the specified 
	encoding.
	
	__Since Python 2.7:__ You can also specify the arguments to this
	method as keyword arguments, for clarity.
	
	encoding::
		**Optional.** The encoding that the string is currently
		in. If not specified, the value from 
		{>sys}(`sys.getdefaultencoding`) is used.
		
	errors::
		**Optional.** The error handling scheme to use. Can be
		any of the following values, or any other name that is
		registered through {>codecs}(`codecs.register_error`).
		
		strict::
			This is the default. Encoding errors raise a
			`UnicodeError` exception, or a subclass thereof.
			
		ignore::
			When an error is encountered, ignore the
			character, and move on to the next one.
			
		replace::
			When an error is encountered, replace the
			problematic character with U+FFFD, for the
			built-in Unicode codecs.

^ .encode([`encoding`[, `errors`]])

	Returns a regular string containing a copy of the original
	string, encoded using the codec registered for the specified 
	encoding.
	
	__Since Python 2.7:__ You can also specify the arguments to this
	method as keyword arguments, for clarity.
	
	encoding::
		**Optional.** The encoding you wish to encode the string
		to. If not specified, the value from 
		{>sys}(`sys.getdefaultencoding`) is used.
		
	errors::
		**Optional.** The error handling scheme to use. Can be
		any of the following values, or any other name that is
		registered through {>codecs}(`codecs.register_error`).
		
		strict::
			This is the default. Encoding errors raise a
			`UnicodeError` exception, or a subclass thereof.
			
		ignore::
			When an error is encountered, ignore the
			character, and move on to the next one.
			
		replace::
			When an error is encountered, replace the
			problematic character with U+FFFD, for the
			built-in Unicode codecs.
			
		xmlcharrefreplace::
			When an error is encountered, replace the
			problematic character with the corresponding
			XML entity.
			
		backslashreplace::
			When an error is encountered, replace the
			problematic character with the corresponding
			backslashed escape sequence.